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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Zbe Divine pursuit 



The DIVINE 

PURSUIT 



"Surely goodness 
and mercy shall 
pursue me all the 
days of my life." 



/ 



BY 



John Edgar McFadyen, B. A. (Oxon.)M. A.(Glas.) 

Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis, 
Knox College, Toronto, 




Fleming H. Revell Company 

Chicago, New York & Toronto 

Publishers of Evangelical Literature 

M CMI 



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COPYRIGHT, 190 I, 

BY FLEMING H. 

REVELL COMPANY 

(June) 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Copies Received 

SEP. 9 1901 

Copyright entry 

CLASS O^XXo. Ns. 

/0370 

COPY S. 



TO 

MY MOTHER IN HEAVEN 

IN MEMORY OF 

THE GLAD FAITH, THE SWEET PATIENCE, 

AND THE UNWAVERING HOPE OF 

ALL HER EARTHLY DAYS 



preface 

This little group of meditations makes no pre- 
tence to any special coherence, other than that of 
a common relation to the spiritual life. Some, 
however, were originally written for special seasons 
of the Christian year; and adjacent meditations 
will sometimes be found to illustrate complementary 
truths. Some were suggested by exegetical study; 
others arose out of particular circumstances and 
experiences, But all alike are offered now, as they 
were originally, simply as devotional studies; and 
they are sent forth with the prayer that they may 
minister to the deeper life of those whom they 

may reach. 

JOHN E MCFADYEN. 

Toronto, May 1, 1901. 



Contents 

PAGE 

The Turning of the Morning . . . .17 

The Sacred Present . „ . . . . 25 

He is Worthy 31 

The Worth of a Man 41 

The River of God 49 

Under Pontius Pilate ....», 57 

A Voice from Another World . . . .67 

The Spirit of the Lord 75 

The Sleep of Faith 83 

The Mind of Christ . . . . . 91 

A New Song 99 

One of These 109 

With All the Saints 119 

The Open Eye 129 

The Unknown Jesus 137 

A Twelve Hours' Day 145 

The Coming Night 151 

The Descent of Jesus , 157 

11 



12 Contents 

PAGE 

Who Am I? ......... 165 

The Denial of Self 173 

Another Country 181 

Shattered Foundations . . 189 

The Divine Pursuit . 197 

The Turning of the Evening .... 203 



Blmfobts ffatber, who with untir- 
ing LOVE DOST WATCH OVER THY CHILDREN 

from one generation to another: amid all 
the changes of our earthly life thou 
abidest. Graciously help us to abide in 
Thee, that evermore we may be steadfast 
and strong. for the light that never 
failed and the grace that never left us 
in the days gone by; for the visions that 
dispelled our doubt and the hopes that 
chastened our sorrow, we lift up our 
hearts to thee in praise and joy. may 
the coming days be filled with a high 
sense of the sacredness of life and the 
value of time. wlth the dawning of each 
new day, shine on us with thy face. up- 
lift our hearts by the thought of the 
glory of our calling in christ and of the 
joy that is set before us in hls service. 
May the numberless memories of Thy pa- 
tient LOVE DELIVER US FROM EVERY CROOKED 

way, from every evil thought and imagina- 
tion, that when all our days on earth 
are done we may be set before the presence 
of Thy glory without blemish in exceeding 
joy, through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Amen. 
13 



"Jacob was left alone; ano tbere 
wrestleb a man witb bfm till tbe rising 
of tbe oawn." 



THE TURNING OF THE MORNING 

How naturally dawn wakes thoughts of vic- 
tory and God ! In her swift, gentle, noiseless 
triumph over night, she is tremulous with His 
presence. It was "at the turning of the morn- 
ing" that "the Lord overthrew the Egyptians 
in the midst of the sea. ' ' And after a deliver- 
ance no less thrilling from a no less heartless 
foe, the Church of a later day sang : 

"God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved. 
God helpeth her at the turning of the morning." 

But behind the victory lies a struggle always 
fierce and often lonely in the gray dawn. 
"Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a 
man with him till the rising of the dawn. M 
Such a struggle in the dawn is the prophecy of 
a great and triumphant day. 

Another year has risen, and we are left 
alone in another dawn. To each and to all the 
year will bring temptation, discipline, and 
17 



18 Ubc Wivinc pursuit 

opportunity; it will test sincerity and strain 
faith. Can we look without flinching on the 
trials that some of its days may hurl against 
us? Every day, with its often unwelcome 
tasks, and unheeded blessings, will bring us 
face to face with God. Shall we see Him? 
Shall we be glad to look upon Him if we see 
Him? or shall we start back in terror or in anger 
at the awful Presence which in failure or in 
sorrow may cross our path? Be sure that into 
whatever experience we wander, He will be 
there before us; and we shall only face Him 
with quietness and confidence if we have 
wrestled with Him, with no less than a terrible 
earnestness, at the rising of the dawn. 

The man who sees God in the dawn will see 
Him in the noonday; yea, and at eventide 
there will be light. The peace that is won in 
the lonely struggle with the unseen Stranger 
will possess the soul in the din and strife of the 
day. That day .will be great into which God 
enters at the dawn ; and the man who is not 
afraid to wrestle with his God in the gray and 
lonely morning will not be afraid of any pos- 



TTbe XTurning of tbe /horning 19 

sible strife with his fellows. Only, the strug- 
gle whose crown is peace and victory must be 
strenuous and sincere. He is a bold man who 
would wrestle with God, and he must be in 
deadly earnest. But — oh, blessed mystery! — 
in this strange struggle man may conquer and 
wrest a blessing from Almighty God. How 
then shall he fear what the year may bring 
forth, who has striven with God and prevailed? 
In the solemn mood which steals over every 
serious man at the opening of the year, God is 
struggling with him. Let him not decline the 
struggle. Let him face it humbly, yet boldly ; 
for on the issue thereof, his year, his soul, de- 
pends. Or can it be that our hearts are so full 
of the world and so dull and irresponsive to 
heavenly solicitations that we have not yet felt 
that powerful, tender, unseen Presence at the 
breaking of the day? For surely with us, too, 
a man has been wrestling, even the man Christ 
Jesus. How long He will yet wrestle we do 
not know. Our day may be very short. Even 
if it be long, when the sun is in the heavens 
and the familiar task has begun again, He may 



20 zbc Bivine pursuit 

go away. He has been wrestling with our 
pessimism and striving to rebuke it by His 
vision of a Father to whom the least among us 
is of more value than many sparrows. He has 
been wrestling with our worldliness and sadly 
reminding us, who should have needed no re- 
minder, that a man's life consisteth not in the 
abundance of the things which he possesseth. 
He has been wrestling with our pride and seek- 
ing to touch our haughty hearts by the sight 
of Himself — in whom and through whom and 
to whom are all things — girt with a towel and 
washing His disciples' feet; for "I am among 
you as he that doth serve." He has been 
wrestling with our insincerity, seeking to put 
us to shame by likening us to foul platters 
and whited sepulchres. He has been wrestling 
with our shallow faith which will not grandly 
trust God for the morrow, reminding us that 
our heavenly Father knoweth that we have 
need of all these things. He has been wres- 
tling with our procrastination which will not 
believe in the divineness of To-day, and seek- 
ing to rouse our slumbering energies by the 



TIbe burning of tbe flDornina 21 

prospect of a day when the door may be shut. 
He has been wrestling with our doubts of a land 
of light beyond the veil, and has come back 
to assure us with His, "Peace be unto you." 

Oh, wretched man that I am ! that so gra- 
cious a Spirit should wrestle with me, and I re- 
main unblessed. Lord! Thou hast promised 
to be with me all the days. Say not, "Let me 
go, for the day breaketh." For I will not let 
Thee go unless Thou bless me. I know that 
not in anger, but in love, Thou dost wrestle 
with me. Thou dost wrestle that Thou mayest 
save. Bless me then, O Lord, with Thy grace, 
and help me at the turning of the morning. 
So shall I be with Thee all the day. Amen. 



"Ube place wbereon tbou stanbest ts 
bols arounb." 



THE SACRED PRESENT 

The mountain of God is just beyond the 
desert. Push far enough across the burning 
sands, like Moses at his lowly shepherd task in 
Midian, and you will come to a mountain, 
where sheep can find pasture and living men 
can see God. Nay, but is not God everywhere, 
the God of the waste where I am as well as of 
the hill to which I am going? Could we be- 
lieve that, then it would not be a waste place 
for us any more ; its loneliness would fill with 
holy presences, its silence ring with heavenly 
voices. And surely God is there. Many of 
His purest and bravest children He has thrust 
into a desert place, to brace them to a patient 
strength they could not learn amid the clamors 
and frivolities of the world, and to open their 
eyes to His calm and fair eternity. Not in the 
pomp of Egypt, but in the weird desolation of 
Midian, does he meet us with a vision of Him- 
self. 

25 



26 Ufee Wivinc pursuit 

Men owe more than they know to the disci- 
pline of the desert; it is there that they see 
"great sights," which touch the springs of 
faith and action. To every man it is given to 
walk in loneliness across a wilderness for days 
or months or years, the moisture sucked by the 
pitiless sun from the ground beneath his feet. 
Yet there in his desert he may see his God. 
He need not take another step; he has but to 
stand, and look, and listen; for any place 
whereon he can be standing, however shelter- 
less or dreary, will be holy ground. That is 
what we need to know and feel, that we are 
traveling not only to God, but with Him, 
every step of every journey; that He is a pres- 
ent God, present in the burning, cheerless 
wilderness as well as on the hill, whose verdure 
and waters invite us. It is much to know that 
God is everywhere; but sharp grief or deep 
loneliness will only be satisfied with the vision 
of Him here. It is not so hard to cherish a 
vague faith that God besets us behind and be- 
fore; harder it is to be sure that He is in the 
place whereon we are standing. Too often we 



TEbe SacreD present 27 

believe that God is anywhere but where we 
need Him, that is, where we are ourselves, 
with our broken hearts and hopes. 

In his loneliness and hopelessness Moses had 
forgotten the sacredness of the present place 
and the present opportunity. He worshiped 
the God of the fathers, of Abraham, Isaac and 
Jacob ; despair had weakened his faith that he 
was also the God of their succeeding race. 
This brooding man, whose mind and heart 
were in the past, with hardly thought or hope 
for present or future, had to be brought back 
through fire to a true insight into the magnifi- 
cence of the present, into a reanimating faith 
in the sacredness of the ground whereon he 
was standing. Did he long for God? There 
He was: not only in the long-lost land, not 
only in the far-off days which were but a half 
inspiring, half depressing memory, but here 
and now in the place whereon he was standing. 
A sorry enough place it was — wild, dreary, 
staring desert; the deadly silence broken only 
at night by the growl of a wild beast; here 
and there a stunted bush ; nowhere any sign of 



28 Zhc H)ivine pursuit 

life or hope. Yet out of the stunted bush start 
the vision and voice of God; the present is 
kindled with the glory of fire. 

So into weary men and women, tired of the 
present, looking with indifference, if not 
despair, to the future, and back to the past 
with wistfulness, this ancient message will 
again put heart, that the place whereon they 
are standing is holy ground ; that the present, 
sad and barren as it seems, is yet the home of 
God, contains a revelation of Him, a vision of 
Him, a word from Him; that the present, 
lonely as it seems, is relieved and illumined by 
the presence of the God who graciously reveals 
Himself in fire to faithful men in quiet hours 
and desert places; and resplendent with the 
presence of the risen Christ, who said, "Behold, 
I am with you all the days till the end of the 
world," and then we shall behold Him face to 
face. 



"Ube£, wben tbes came to Jesus, 
besouQbt bim earnestly saving "fee is 
wortbs tbat tbou sbouloest oo tbis for 
bim/ " 



HE IS WORTHY 

He was only a foreign soldier's servant; but 
he was dear to his master, and he lay dying. 
Something in the Jewish people had won his 
master's heart; most of all had the oft-told tale 
of Jesus' healing love touched him to a strange 
sure faith in the Healer. So he sends to 
Jesus; would he come and heal his servant? 
And as we look upon the frank brave face, 
whose noble brow is fretted with anxious care 
for the man he loves, the words of the envoys 
find a willing echo in our hearts, "He is 
worthy that thou shouldest do this for him. ' ' 

No man who reads his own heart aright 
would count himself worthy. A Jacob knows 
that he is not worthy of the least of all the 
mercies of his God. A Baptist confesses him- 
self unworthy even to stoop and loose the Mas- 
ter's sandal. This captain of a hundred men 
counts it too high an honor to have Jesus stand 
31 



32 TEbe Divine pursuit 

beneath his roof. But if any man may deem 
another worthy, surely it is this soldier heart, 
with its passion of love for a suffering servant, 
its generosity of affection for an alien and 
despised people, its miracle of clear-sighted 
faith in the yet unseen, and all but unknown 
Jesus. 

But there is another Captain of many a hun- 
dred men; and He too is worthy. When He 
says "go," and we go, however humble the 
errand or narrow the way, we shall not go far 
till we find that the way on which He has sent 
us, is the way to heaven. When He bids us 
do this, and we do it, there hangs about the 
deed we do, be it never so lowly, the halo of 
eternity. For it is done for Him ; and He is 
worthy and He liveth for evermore. His serv- 
ice transmutes the commonest life into some- 
thing more precious than gold, yea than fine 
gold; even into beauty immortal, ineffable. 

Forever, then, with the Lord, who comes 
without ceasing in every needy brother, in 
every call of duty, in every household care! 
Life cannot surely then be less than divinely 



ft>e is 'QBlortbs 33 

great to one who finds in all its claims a call to 
the service of Him who is worthy. In our 
cramped experience we pine for nobler oppor- 
tunity ; yet we stumble and fall over the oppor- 
tunities that the common duties of every day 
lay at our feet. We reserve ourselves for 
great occasions, forgetting that every occasion 
is great into which we allow Jesus to enter; 
that every house is blessed beneath whose roof 
He stands. 

Why do we keep our lives so dark by closing 
our eyes to the heavenly splendor that is play- 
ing upon them? Every act might gleam with 
a gracious Presence ; for has it not been given 
us to do by One who is worthy? Life would 
leap forth with glad bounds towards the un- 
troubled joy that is set before it, did we thrill 
to the sense of the holy privilege that is ours in 
His service. 

There comes a claim upon our strength and 
sympathy. The w r ork is not directly ours; 
such is the answer we make to our hearts. It 
breaks with rude voice into the too crowded 
monotony of our days. We see in it an inter- 



34 Ube HttPine pursuit 

ruption instead of an opportunity. We will 
not turn aside. Or if we listen and help and 
heal, it is with a sullen grudge against the 
unkind thing that has turned us from the 
straight and selfish way on which we fain had 
trodden. For such unlovely service there can 
be no amaranthine crown. The task was hard 
perchance ; there was no form nor comeliness 
about it that we should desire it. But 
He is worthy, for whom thou shouldest do 
this. 

Or perhaps our work is honest and good. 
Perhaps we are workmen who need not to be 
ashamed. With trembling, yet with confi- 
dence, we can fling it open to the searching 
eyes of the Masterbuilder; for it is our bravest 
and best. Yet we may be too haughtily care- 
less of the feelings and prejudices of the breth- 
ren and sisters, for whom our work is done. 
Has needless offence been given by us and do 
we not care? We have been faithful in the 
great things, and are stubborn and angry be- 
cause men have been offended by our inatten- 
tion to things that we deem trivial. Do we 



1foe is Wortbs 35 

well to be angry? For nothing is trivial; least 
of all, anything that prejudices a man's real 
influence. A man of apostolic power can be 
all things to all men. He will be vexed ii even 
his trivial things have given offence; and with 
humility and self-control, he will set himself to 
be " perfect and entire, wanting nothing.' ' 
For is not his work the service of Another? 
And He is worthy for whom thou shouldest do 
this. 

He is worthy. In this strange sense of a 
Presence that followeth all our way, lies the 
gracious stimulus to render of our best to God, 
the world, and ourselves, till all our work is 
done. The work may be lowly, unhonored, 
unguessed, unseen of others. So small a serv- 
ice may seem hardly worth while. But it is 
service of Him, and He is worthy. 

And those for whom we spend ourselves may 
return our kindness with slander, or worse. 
They "were tortured, they were slain with the 
sword; being destitute, afflicted, tormented. " 
And of them it is written that the world was 
not worthy. The tragedy of all service is that 



36 Ube HHvine pursuit 

it is so often offered to the unworthy. But 
worthy or unworthy as those may be, for whom 
we live and suffer and to whom we give our 
best, He is worthy; and with that we may be 
well content. 

He is worthy for whom thou shouldest do 
this. The tongue of the unlearned and igno- 
rant man may well sing for joy, as he sees how 
his life too may be caught up into the heavens 
by the rushing mighty wind of enthusiasm for 
One who is worthy. The poorest and the 
plainest, when they lay their gifts upon the 
altar of service, will find them not only conse- 
crated, but transfigured. 

Thou shouldest do this. So we need not 
search the heavens or the depths for opportunity 
of service. It comes unsought to every living 
man. Every hour it stands knocking at the 
door. It is the Master in disguise. To the 
unsealed eyes the lowliest act fills with a pres- 
ence, as suddenly before the astonished dis- 
ciples in the simply furnished upper room the 
Saviour of mankind appeared. In every oppor- 
tunity the Master is calling for thee. If the 



*>e is TKHortbs 37 

thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well, 
passing well ; for He is worthy. 

Not only in this world of effort but in that 
quiet land where they shall not hunger nor 
thirst nor struggle any more, will the presence 
of Him who is worthy, kindle the soul to rap- 
ture. For with the many angels round about 
the throne we shall sing with a loud voice, 
" Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to 
receive the power, and riches, and wisdom, 
and might, and honor, and glory, and bless- 
mg. 



"Ube wicfieo ate Ufce tbe cbaff wbicb 
tbe wino orivetb awas. 

"Therefore tbe wicfceo sball not stano 
in tbe judgment." 



THE WORTH OF A MAN 

A man is worth what he is, not what he has ; 
and that is true both of this world and of that 
which is to come. While he lives he may win 
and lose everything but one — his own person- 
ality. That is always his ; ultimately it is all 
that is his. In that lies his worth, if he have 
any; not in the abundance of the things which 
he possesses and can lose. And when he dies 
he loses what he has, but he remains what he 
is. He who is unjust will be unjust still; he 
who is holy will be holy still; but he who is 
wealthy will be wealthy no more. It is a pain- 
ful tribute to the commercialism of our age 
that a rich man is said to be worth so much 
when he dies. If he is worth no more than 
what he left he is worth nothing ; and in the 
other world which, with all his foresight, he 
has forgotten or ignored, he will start a bank- 
rupt, if he start at all. Or will he not rather 
41 



42 Ube HHvine pursuit 

be too weak to start on this new, strange 
journey, too weak even to stand; able only to 
vanish like the chaff which the judgment wind 
of God drives to and fro — his withered soul 
shriveling up before the fierce heat of God's 
judgment fire? All the gold of all the mines 
will not purchase him peace or pardon, or re- 
deem him from the fate of those who have 
trifled away their gifts or opportunities. 

Worth so much! to whom? Who was the 
better for what he was worth? Society? Was 
he himself the better for it, or was he only the 
richer? Could he face the silence? Could he 
see the Unseen? Did his presence lighten any 
darkness, cheer any loneliness? Was any 
heart the sorer for his passing? Was "his soul 
well knit, and all his battles won"? Unless 
there was some divine idea in him, which he 
represented and incarnated, unless he was a 
worthy man, unless, that is, there was some- 
thing in him we could worship — for worship is 
tribute to worth — he was worth nothing, 
though he had billions. 

Will there ever come a day, we sometimes 



Ube Wortb of a /IDan 43 

ask, when men will get what they deserve? 
The dreamers of dreams comfort lis with the 
vision of a world to come in the distant days, 
when inner worth will be fairly measured, and 
fitly rewarded with its due share of the world's 
good things, its honor, fame and gold. Is that 
God's way? Not always have the benefactors 
of religion won their $5,000 a year. Many of 
the greatest of them were roasted alive, had 
their tongues slit, and their heads hacked off; 
4 * others had trial of mockings and scourgings, 
yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment; 
they were stoned, they were sawn asunder." 
Great poets have received for little poems 
a blank check, to be filled in as avarice 
prompted; and greater poets have received 
for lasting work the indifference, even the 
scorn, of their own generation. Great paint- 
ers have received thousands for devoting 
their genius to trivial and unworthy themes; 
and greater painters have given the world their 
finest work for nothing. There may be some 
world, where worth and wages correspond, and 
the genius is the millionaire; but it is not 



44 Ube Wivim pursuit 

ours. Fools have been made emperors, and 
cowards generals ; knaves have presided over 
the administration of justice, and traditional- 
ists over schools of learning and religion. 
Folly and wickedness have reaped wealth and 
power and fame. While philosophers have 
been laughed at; philanthropists have been 
mobbed; explorers have lost their lives in 
swamps and snows; inventors have been ridi- 
culed ; reformers have been pilloried ; apostles 
have been beaten with rods, stoned, ship- 
wrecked, "in perils of rivers, in perils of rob- 
bers, in perils in the city, in perils in the 
wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among 
false brethren, in hunger and thirst, in fast- 
ings, in cold and nakedness." "Often," says 
St. Paul. Yet worth is worth, as God is God. 
"It cannot be valued with the fine gold of 
Ophir," nor need it be; for every man has 
what he deserves just in being what he is. A 
true man's native power, his goodness, his 
worth, is his dearest satisfaction ; he craves no 
more than the privilege of exercising the gift 
that is in him, of doing his work and being 



XTbe Wortb of a /H>an 45 

himself. Let us see that our hearts and minds 
are set upon the unseen things, which alone will 
stand the shock of death and the ruin of 
worlds. 



" Ubere is a river, tbe streams wbereof 
mafte glab tbe cits of (Bob." 



THE RIVER OF GOD 

The great lyric, which we call the forty- 
sixth Psalm, presents us with magnificent con- 
fusions, and with a no less magnificent order. 
First, a world in ruins; the earth dislodged 
from the pillars on which she rests, the moun- 
tains torn up by their roots and flung into the 
heart of the sea, the sea itself raging and foam- 
ing, its proud swelling shaking the very 
mountains; sea and land have left the bounds 
appointed for them, and have crossed into each 
other's domain; in all nature, nothing but 
confusion confounded. Then comes a con- 
fusion worse confounded. Instead of angry 
nature, there are cruel, threatening men; in- 
stead of foaming seas there is the roar of 
nations, foaming out their warlike fury against 
Jehovah and His people; instead of mountains 
hurled into the sea, there is the blustering of 
worldly kingdoms. They come to the fray 

49 



so Ube HHvine ©ursuit 

with cruel weapons of war — bow, spear, shield, 
chariot — armed with deadly hate and pride. 
Was it any wonder that in the midst of such 
turmoil Israel should feel in distress? Will 
such a proud sea not sweep away everything 
which it overwhelms? But there is a river 
whose streams can make glad, as well as a sea 
whose waters can devastate. 

Israel stands firm in a world where every- 
thing else is in flux : stands, because her confi- 
dence is in Jehovah. Though distressed, she 
is not in despair : so far from being in despair 
that she looks out to the future with the sub- 
limest confidence. "We will not fear." The 
God whose grace has saved her from these 
furious floods can save her from anything. 
4 * Jehovah sat as King at the flood; yea, 
Jehovah sitteth as King forever.'' So "we will 
not fear," not even though the mountains that 
are round about Jerusalem — mountains whose 
fixity another Psalmist took as the symbol of 
the security Jehovah was to his people — be 
torn up and hurled across the plain into the 
depths of the great sea. Whence came this 



Xtbe IRiver of (Soft 51 

brave paean of joy? Was it not from the cer- 
tainty of God's grace, the certainty that "there 
was a river whose streams made glad the city 
of God"? 

The beauty and the insight of this verse are 
not truly felt till we realize how destitute the 
Holy City was of everything that could have 
given birth to such a thought. In the words 
of a German traveler, "While other famous 
cities owe their power to natural conditions, 
such as commanding sites on seas and rivers, 
Jerusalem is distinguished precisely by the 
absence of all such natural advantages. She 
stands there alone in the wilderness, built on 
hard, rocky soil, with no rich pastures, with 
hardly a field, without a river— -indeed with 
hardly a spring — far from the great paths of 
commerce. She is what she is, without a peer, 
only through the divine revelation of which 
she was the scene. ' ' 

This riverless city has become the city 
"without a peer" because of her unseen 
river, the river of the grace of God, the river 
of the water of life. The desert, with its 



52 Zbc Divine pursuit 

monotony and dreariness, was never far away. 
Rocks and bare hills stare at yGu everywhere. 
Through the dusty city ran no refreshing 
streams— none but one, the river of the God 
who was in the midst of her; a stream that 
could only be seen by the eye of faith, a very 
powerful faith, for there was nothing in the 
landscape to suggest it. But if there was noth- 
ing in the landscape, there was in the history — 
in the recent deliverance. For the song is sup- 
posed to be a triumphal ode on the deliverance of 
Jerusalem from Sennacherib and his Assyrians. 
The river of God that flowed all unseen through 
the town had saved it from destruction. Those 
who had eyes to see it, and who were refreshed 
by the breezes that blew from it, feared not 
though the mountains plunged into the sea. 
Mountains might reel; but the people were 
safe so long as the river was there. That was 
the pledge that the night was already far spent, 
and God would help them "at the turning of 
the morning/' 

Oh, the joy of the eyes which see the sights 
that they saw ! That, in the dreary, dusty city 



XTbe TRivcv of <Sofc 53 

— under siege, it may be — within whose walls 
is so much pain and misery, and on whose 
streets walk anxiety and sorrow, yet see through 
it all the silver line of the river of God. It is 
from the far days of the world's infancy that 
the tale has come down to us of a beautiful 
garden with trees many and fair, and a river 
flowing through it. The time of cities was not 
yet: and when they came, they brought so 
much siege and weariness that it was the few- 
est who could see God's river there. But the 
river is there, and one day — how far away we 
know not — river and city will alike be fair. 
Every gate of the city will be a precious stone, 
and in the midst of the street thereof will be 
the river of the water of life, and there shall 
be no curse any more. 



"If believe in Jesus Gbrist, Ibis onlv. 
Son our Xoro, wbo was conceive© bp. 
tbe tt>olv. (Bbost, born of tbe IDirgin 
ZlDars, suffereb unber Pontius flMlate." 



UNDER PONTIUS PILATE 

One generation passeth away and another 
generation cometh, but two names will be re- 
membered as long as the world lasts. Every 
Sabbath day, as the Christian Church confesses 
her faith in God the Father Almighty, maker 
of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His 
only begotten Son, she is reminded of Mary, 
the Hebrew mother who bore Him, and Pilate, 
the Roman governor who crucified Him. We 
cannot look upon the Holy Trinity without 
seeing the faces of these two mortals who have 
won so strange an immortality through their 
relationship to Jesus, who was born of the one 
and suffered under the other. 

" Suffered under Pontius Pilate/' Hideous 
pre-eminence among the sons of men ! Heaven 
and hell are round about the Savior. Mary on 
the right, the Virgin Mary ; Pilate on the left, 
Pontius Pilate, under whom He suffered ; and 
57 



58 Ube Divine pursuit 

Jesus in the midst. What a trinity! And 
those on either side are immortal as Jesus. 
There stands Pilate before us, if only for a 
moment, every Sabbath day. Into the stately 
worship he glides like a lost soul from out of a 
world of wailing and lamentation, as if he 
hated his own immortality and besought us to 
forget him. But he lives on and on; for 
Christ " suffered under Pontius Pilate," and 
the Church must remember her Lord's suffer- 
ing, as she remembers His love. Oh Pilate! 
with the haggard face and restless eyes : face 
troubled with the thought that some son of the 
gods stands before thee, and it is thine awful 
privilege to decide his fate : eyes strained with 
fear upon the visions that thy wife saw in the 
dream that troubled her by night. Oh Pilate ! 
with the bloody hands. Thou hast slain a 
righteous man, a man whom thine own Roman 
heart knew and confessed to be righteous. 
Thou didst call for water: but thou shalt 
never, never, never wash thy hands clean. 
See ! they are red to-day as ever after all these 
centuries. And Christ's Church is smitten 



xanDer Pontius pflate 59 

with wonder and horror and pity, as she looks 
at thee ; for her Lord suffered under thee. 

Behold the man ! covered with nineteen cen- 
turies of shame, the scorn and the pity of every 
generation. The shame of other men has been 
buried in kindly oblivion, but his lives on. 
Every seventh day till the end of time he will 
be remembered in every land which names the 
name of Christ, by old men and little children, 
as Pontius Pilate, the man under whom the 
Lord of glory suffered. 

But is the crime so rare which has made his 
memory so hateful? The accident of office has 
given him his fearful title to immortality. 
Had we been in the governor's place, might 
we not as easily have earned his infamous 
immortality? He was but false to the best 
that he knew; and, if that be his sin, who 
will cast the first stone? He rejected the 
Christ who stood before him; have we 
never rejected the Christ who speaks in 
our heart? And which is the more awful? 
for Pilate to condemn Him, with the howls 
of a threatening mob ringing in his ears, 



60 Zhc Bivine pursuit 

and the mysterious majesty of his prisoner 
not known to be the effulgence of God's 
own glory; or for us to spurn Him who know 
of a surety that He is Lord of all, and who 
confess with our lips that He will one day 
judge the quick and the dead? If Pilate was 
afraid when he heard that Jesus had made 
Himself the Son of God, surely we too may 
tremble; for His resurrection, His present 
power and triumphs among us, persuade us 
that He is in truth the Son of God. To reject 
such a voice when it speaks within us and 
pleads with us to be brave, is to insult the 
gracious majesty of God and to imperil our 
eternity. The lonely distinction which the 
creed has given to Pilate is not so lonely after 
all. Every man who has ever played the 
coward, betrayed the highest, refused the 
noblest, chosen the basest, may fairly take his 
place by the side of the governor, and then 
what a great and marvelous fellowship there 
will be ! They will come from the east and the 
west, from the north and the south : some with 
brazen brows, others with tear-stained faces; 



TUnfcer Pontius Pilate 61 

and they will throng around Pilate, every 
man and woman and child since the world be- 
gan, and they will perforce own him as king, 
not because his wickedness is greater than 
theirs, but because he spoke the word which 
nailed Christ to His cross. 

There is that within us all which might have 
given us Pilate's place in the creed, had we 
but had his opportunity. His judgment was 
not at fault; his stern Roman sense of justice 
forced him to a right decision. But he lacked 
the courage of his convictions, and are we 
better than he? It is not hard to judge fairly 
about Christ; with honest men only one judg- 
ment is possible. But it is hard to deal fairly 
with Him. Rather than do that, men are pre- 
pared to risk an eternity of infamy. Pilate 
found no fault with this Man: and then he 
scourged Him. Strange logic, strange but 
not rare. We find no fault with the Man, and 
we scourge Him too : in the apathy with which 
we serve Him, in the infrequency with which 
we think of Him, in our indifference to the sin 
which grieves Him, in our neglect of those for 



62 ube H>fvtne pursuit 

whom He died. Jesus Christ, born of the 
Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, 
suffered under me. If the Church knew us as 
well as she knows Pilate, would she not shrink 
from us too in horror? 

"Thou art not Caesar's friend,' ' shouted the 
mob, "if thou release this man." And "wish- 
ing to content the multitude he delivered up 
Jesus to be crucified.' ' To Pilate was com- 
mitted the perilous honor of deciding the 
earthly fate of Jesus. Angels, men, and devils 
were looking on, as Hebrew righteousness 
stood for sentence before Roman might. And 
Pilate fell. He could not face the loss of in- 
fluence or popularity. But Caesar has left 
him, and the cruel, howling mob has left him 
to bear his shame in the creed all these cen- 
turies alone ; and what will they do for him in 
the great day when he stands for judgment 
before the Christ who once stood before him? 
Infamy on earth, shame and confusion at the 
judgment and throughout the ages: that is too 
dear a price to pay for the impotent friendship 
of emperor and people. 



THn&er Pontius Pilate 63 

When Christ stands before us in some duty 
or some choice, we may, like Pilate, reject 
Him: but in rejecting Him, we decide not His 
fate but our own. cl Suffered under Pontius 
Pilate. ' ' That dirge has rung throughout the 
ages, and followed him like an immortal curse. 
11 Suffered under me." Unheard on earth, 
save by my own conscience, that cry is pealing 
throughout the courts of heaven, and will con- 
demn me at the last. 



"Wben it was evening, on tbat oas, 
tbe first Oas of tbe weefc, anO wben tbe 
ooors were sbut wbere tbe Disciples 
were, Jesus came ano stooo in tbe 
miOst ano saitb unto tbem, 'peace be 
unto sou.' " 



A VOICE FROM ANOTHER WORLD 

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Is not 
this the Easter morning? And why art thou 
disquieted within me? For now is Christ risen 
from the dead. Hope thou in Him. 

If I can but believe with all my heart that 

my Lord, whom cruel hands nailed long ago to 

a tree, is not now sleeping an eternal sleep in 

his lone Syrian grave, but is indeed alive and 

triumphant for evermore, I may look with 

quietness on sorrow and death, and forget my 

grief in the light of immortality. What is all 

our disquiet but want of faith in the eternal 

world, where all the worth that earth has ever 

seen abides? And, as we gaze upon our risen 

Lord, who could not be holden of death, do not 

our hearts fill with a great faith in the world 

beyond, as the realest of all realities? Time 

bears all its sons away ; so that without this 

solemn faith in the sureness of another world 
67 



68 Ube HHvine pursuit 

— a faith which nowhere becomes a certainty 
except in Him who rose from the dead — the 
contemplation of life would move us to inex- 
pressible sadness. Could any thought be sad- 
der than that the past was dead, and would 
never live again — all the brave life and high 
hope lost in thick night, vanished into a silence 
that has never been broken? 

Never but once : and that once in a voice of 
wondrous grace, and by a figure of more than 
earthly glory. The figure was that of Jesus the 
Christ, with the nail prints yet clear upon His 
hands; and the voice said: 44 Peace/' Almost 
any voice from within so thick a veil would 
have been welcome ; it would have borne to us 
the assurance that the dear dead, whom we 
had watched with struggling hope till we had 
to say the stern good-bye, still were, however 
shadowy and joyless their life might be. But 
that the only voice which ever rang across 
from their world to ours should utter a word 
of peace! What balm to tired and restless 
hearts ! In the grateful stillness of this Easter 
day, let us listen: and, borne across the Sab- 



H Woice from Hnotber MorlD 6 9 

bath breeze into the world of our unrest from 
a world which too seldom haunts our imagina- 
tion and a Saviour whose words have too little 
power over us, comes the soothing sound of 
peace. Do you not hear it? " Jesus came" 
out of the invisible world "and stood in the 
midst, and saith unto them, * Peace be unto 
you.' " Are you not glad? And will you not 
praise Him, who is the health of your counte- 
nance? The unfulfilled promise and the baffled 
effort of the past are not dead : they have only 
gone up higher to the quiet land, where they 
will know the power of an endless life. 

On the dawn of the first Easter morning a 
weeping woman stood beside a grave. And on 
the evening of that day, within closed doors, a 
band of sorrowful men met together with fear 
in their hearts, "fear of the Jews." The 
woman was weeping, and the men were sad 
because they had lost Jesus. He had gone 
away, and He had not come back again. And 
their hearts were sore, and their hopes were 
dead. But "Jesus came." Out of the awful 
silence into which men thought they had put 



70 Ubc Wivim pursuit 

him forever, He came. Came into the garden 
and said, "Mary"; and a wild joy filled her 
heart: "I have seen the Lord." Came again 
at the close of the day to the forlorn and ter- 
rified band, and said: "Peace be unto you." 
This was not merely the familiar greeting of 
friend to friend — though it was that — in that 
strange moment when two worlds met. Nor 
was it merely a kindly word — though that it 
was, too — to pacify their terror, as this appari- 
tion from another world stood silently and sud- 
denly before them. It was a word of larger, 
more majestic scope. Spoken to men who had 
met in fear, and who looked forward to 
troubled days, it had a wondrous power to 
soothe, coming from the lips of the Lord, 
fresh from His victory over death. "The 
disciples, therefore, were glad when they saw 
the Lord," glad with a great gladness which 
we cannot know till we have fathomed the 
depths of their sorrow and despair as they saw 
Jesus taken from His cross and laid in Joseph's 
tomb. Jesus is strangely earnest about this 
peace. Those worn, hunted men need it ; and 



H IDotce from Hnotber Worl& 71 

He will not leave them till He has made them 
sure of it. <4 Jesus, therefore, said to them 
again, * Peace be unto you.' M 

The vision of the risen Christ, with a mes- 
sage of peace upon His lips, turned the disciples' 
terror into gladness, and still to-day are that 
vision and that message mighty to save from 
any grief or fear that frets us. To all who 
face sorrow, defeat, bereavement, death, the 
Easter voice says, " Peace be unto you" — a 
voice from a world wherein these things have 
all been swallowed up in victory. 

Why art thou then cast down, O my soul? 
and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope 
thou in God the Father and in Jesus Christ His 
Son, who is the first-fruits of them that have 
fallen asleep. 



""Bdbere tbe Spirit of tbe 2Loro is, 
tbere is liberty." 



THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD 

In every art the master is free. He can 
create and control. Rules do not determine 
him ; precedents do not bind him. Where the 
spirit of the master is, there is liberty. He 
breaks old laws and makes new ones. He 
even dispenses with laws, not because he 
despises them, but because he is a law unto 
himself. The law is in his heart, and he ex- 
presses it as he will. His fingers move across 
the organ keys, and he fills the listening air 
with forms, now soft as the moonlight, now 
wild as the storm. They are born, not of 
rule, but of the spirit. 

And as in art, so in life. Where the Spirit 
of the Master is, there is liberty. Yet who en- 
joys it? Are we not the veriest slaves, bound 
by our past and our parentage, our habits and 
our sins, our education and our society? From 
behind the thick walls and the barred windows 
75 



76 Ube HHvine pursuit 

we look out upon a world of moving life and 
beauty. But we cannot reach it : for we have 
not the Spirit of the Lord. Let that Spirit but 
stir within the heart of any prisoner, and the 
walls, be they never so thick, and the bars, be 
they never so heavy, will vanish as before the 
breath of God, and he shall be out in the open 
again, with the blue above him, and the 
spacious kindly earth around him, free to move 
whithersoever the Spirit leads him. For the 
Spirit is sure to carry him somewhere, not im- 
possibly into yet untrodden paths, not improb- 
ably among wild beasts. But he will walk and 
not be afraid ; for he is led of the Spirit, and 
the Spirit knows. 

The world with its social and international 
problems, the Church with her perplexities of 
creed and organization, need now and ever 
men filled with the Spirit. Men there are, 
enough and to spare, of the letter: men who 
cannot take a brave step forward unless they 
see the footprints of a bolder than they. Not 
by such are the new heavens and the new 
earth ushered in. The world is lifted and 



XTbe Spirit of tbe Xorfc 77 

moved by the men of the Spirit, for they alone 
enjoy the freedom under which progress is pos- 
sible. They strike a blow as the world needs 
and the Spirit bids, and do not tremble though 
their blow should be the first; some blow 
must be first. Meaner natures hide behind 
convention ; will do nothing which cannot be 
supported by precedent. Free men create 
precedent, and thereby show the deepest re- 
spect of all for the past. To them the past is 
not an incubus but an inspiration. All that is 
best in it was created by men who looked at 
life and Scripture with their own eyes and 
reached their own conclusions ; and we do them 
the deepest of all wrongs when we look or try 
to look through their eyes and abide or try 
to abide by their conclusions. All that is per- 
manent in the work of the fathers is the spirit 
in which it was done. Their institutions and 
results are not final for us any more than are 
ours for the man of the aftertime. The free 
man would neither bind nor be bound. 

Difficulties and doubts demand originality, 
and that only the man of the Spirit possesses. 



78 Zbc HHvtne pursuit 

He cannot be commonplace, even if he would ; 
the Spirit will not let him. He sees problems, 
many and hard enough, in Church and State ; 
learns for their solution all that the past can 
teach, and trusts for the rest to the Spirit 
within him. "If ye are led by the Spirit, ye 
are not under the law." Christ was beside 
Himself; so said His own kin. He had a 
devil; so said the leaders of the Church. And 
all because His methods were not conven- 
tional; all because He was free, obeying the 
impulse of the mighty Spirit within. So the 
men of the Spirit have often been branded as 
fools and heretics by a world which they 
turned upside down — small wonder! — and 
oftentimes they have had to fight single handed 
with their back against the wall, not counting 
their life or their reputation dear to them, if 
only they were privileged to do what they could 
for a thankless generation, and to testify to the 
might and immortal presence of the Spirit, 
who strengthened their heart when hosts en- 
camped against them. 
Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is lib- 



XTbe Spirit of tbe XorD 79 

erty. Liberty, but not license ; for liberty is 
only possible within law. The free man is 
only free to act in the Spirit of the Lord, to 
move within the world of hopes and energies 
created by Him. But what a world! For all 
things are yours, and ye are Christ's. If lib- 
erty is law, yet law is liberty. The heart made 
free by the indwelling presence of Christ will 
express her emotions, her hopes, her faiths, in 
language which may send a thrill of astonish- 
ment through the conventional religious world. 
There is so much unreality everywhere that 
the world will always marvel, as it did of old, 
when it hears the voice of one who speaks with 
authority, and not as the scribes ; and it may 
seek to silence such a voice by ridicule, by 
excommunication, by the cross, according to 
the temper of the age. But till it is silenced 
the speaker must speak, and the thinker must 
think, and the fighter must fight; for the Spirit 
must fulfil itself. On the face of dark and 
troubled waters the Spirit moves; moves 
because it must. The Spirit— for wind and 
spirit are alike in the Greek — the Spirit blow- 



So Ube Wivinc pursuit 

eth. And to men, stifled in the atmosphere of 
precedent and prejudice, welcome are the 
breezes that blow from the Alpine heights of 
some strong nature_ in whom the Spirit dwells. 
The Spirit bloweth where it listeth, not in the 
wake of some other spirit, but where it will ; 
for it is original and free. Jesus breathed His 
Spirit upon twelve unheard-of men: and 
ancient faiths crumbled at their touch. He 
breathed upon a German miner's son: an old 
church tottered, and a new world burst into 
being. If He breathe upon us, may we not da 
things as great as these? 



"1be givetb unto l>is beloveo in sleep." 



THE SLEEP OF FAITH 

Faith without work is vain; faith without 
rest is impossible. The long day tries the 
sweetest patience, strains the strongest nerves. 
Then come the hours of quiet and rest, when 
men may look up to God and renew their 
strength. The sunshine may tempt a vigorous 
worker to self-reliance. Even though under 
the shadow of a great trust, the worker begins 
to feel sure of himself, as he sees the work 
growing beneath his hands. Yet no worker is 
safe until he is also sure of God: and that 
sureness he learns in the silence, when the day 
is done. As he lifts up his eyes from his work 
to the stars, the peace of the stars comes back 
upon him, and soothes him into deep thoughts 
of eternity. God's gifts are not over when the 
sun sinks in the west. Into the silence that 
follows He continues to pour them; for "He 
giveth to His beloved in sleep. ' ' 
83 



84 Ube Wivinc pursuit 

In sleep. What means then the cruel haste, 
with which we rush across our little life and 
wear our strength and fret our hearts away? 
What means this great unrest with which all 
our life is smitten, and which threatens not to 
let us go till it destroys us? On almost every 
face are lines that tell of a strain too sore. 
Where have those faces gone, those quiet, 
other-worldly faces, that look so gently upon 
us from the portraits of the middle ages, as if 
in sad and silent pity at the foolish haste 
which hides from us the eternal peace? All 
the world is busy : never has more work been 
done than to-day. And yet there is much that 
we cannot do. With our splendid gains have 
gone tragic losses. We have lost the desire, 
almost the power, to read aloud round the 
family hearth, lost the love of loneliness, lost 
the delight in pastures green and waters of 
quietness, lost the faith which can rest and 
wait patiently in the stillness to hear what God 
the Lord will say. Thomas k Kempis would 
look strangely out of place among us; but not 
more strange than we should look in the rest 



TTbe Sleep of ffattb 85 

that remaineth, if we have never had a fore- 
taste of it here. 

We are gaining the world and losing our 
soul. How can we hope to possess the great 
God, unless we first possess ourselves? and 
how can we possess ourselves unless we come 
apart for a little while from the work which is 
draining our life-blood, and sit down in a 
desert place alone with our own hearts and 
God? All work is vain that is not inspired by 
a vision and sustained by a strength won in 
quiet hours. **It is vain for you that ye rise 
up early, and so late sit down to the evening 
meal." Vain: for it is costing you strength 
which you are not renewing. Vain, too: for 
the nervous eagerness to work so hard in the 
sunshine and so deep into the night, looks as if 
you thought too highly of the work of your 
own hands, and had forgotten that there is 
Another who watches over you and your work 
with loving eyes, One who works with you, 
and works evermore, who slumbers not nor 
sleeps. The hours in which you rest the 
weary hand and the jaded brain are not to be 



86 ^be Divine pursuit 

counted as lost. They may bless you more 
than the struggle and toil of the day: for "He 
giveth to His beloved in sleep." The faith 
which would be strong must learn to fold her 
hands and bend her knees as well as ply her 
tools ; she must sit with Mary as well as serve 
with Martha. 

We read in a Psalm of an ancient church 
worn by her own feverish restlessness. She 
has a great impelling faith in God : the house 
which she is building is probably God's house, 
and the city which she is watching, the Holy 
City. No idle church is she : she believes in 
working out her own salvation. There is a 
fierce, almost relentless, persistency about her 
enthusiasm. She spares no effort to compass 
the good end: lengthens her day of toil, short- 
ens her night of rest. You can see the busy 
workmen on the walls, and listen to the steady 
tramp of the watchmen as they go their 
rounds. You can hear the stroke of the ham- 
mer, and mark the eager strain of the watch- 
men's eyes. The building rises visibly every 
day : for the work goes on in hot haste, from 



ZTbe Sleep ot jfattb 87 

early morning till late evening. A noble 
church! with enthusiasm, energy, industry, 
devotion. Yet she has to learn that energy 
can only be sustained by meditation and 
repose, that the building of walls and the 
watching of cities can only be safely left to 
men who know how weak they are, and how 
sorely they need the help of the Unseen. She 
has so much faith in herself that she too easily 
forgets that it is God that worketh. Her 
bui 1 ders are so busy and their tools make such 
a din that they cannot hear the voice of God ; 
her walls are rising so high that they are shut- 
ting out the heavens. She must put down her 
tools, hasten home earlier to the evening meal, 
give herself over to restful household joys, 
take quiet rest and sleep : and there she will 
build by the grace of God what she could not 
build in the bustle of the day — self-knowledge, 
patient strength, faith in the power that 
haunts the silences. He giveth to His beloved 
in sleep. For such workers that is the one 
thing needful : they must learn to come home 
earlier, and spend the closing hours of the day 



88 xrbe HHvine pursuit 

in tmdistracted peace, leaving the walls and 
the city to God. 

The modern church no less than the ancient, 
and all men and women who love their souls, 
need to take to heart the admonition of the 
Psalmist. Life is rushing, as it never rushed 
before. In all directions walls are rising, 
watchmen are watching, effort is being ex- 
pended, money is being squandered, strength 
is being wasted, lives are being laid down. 
But "it is vain for you": you make progress 
in every direction but one — in that one which 
is the condition of all progress : the power to 
stand back from the crowd, and enter into pos- 
session of your own soul ; the delight in soli- 
tude, in brooding, in repose, in " sleep." It is 
there that His beloved win their best gifts, 
and build their stateliest walls ; it is there that 
they see visions and dream dreams. For it is 
there, in the stillness, that they learn at once 
the importance and the unimportance of their 
own effort: it is there that they win that self- 
control, that steadiness of hand and of purpose 
which they need when they go out to build 
the city or the temple walls. 



"1ba\>e tbis mine in sou, wbicb was 
also in Cbrist 3esus." 



THE MIND OF CHRIST 

"Have this mind in you," urged the apostle, 
"which was also in Christ Jesus." What an 
appeal ! We sink in despair under the weight 
of its magnificence. Oh, wretched man that I 
am, mock not my weakness with such a dream 
of the impossible. The mind of Christ Jesus 
within me! Such a mind as His in such an 
one as I ! It may not be. The apostle sum- 
mons me to a height too steep for me, for any 
man. Were it not enough that I should follow 
afar off in the footsteps of Jesus, speak His 
words of grace, and do His deeds of love, so 
far as in my weakness I may, in lowly imita- 
tion of my unapproachable Lord? What He 
did, that I will seek to do. I will study the 
story of His life, with eager eye for all that I 
can make my own, and with a half wistful 
regret that there is so much into which I can- 
not follow Him. I am not led into the wilder- 
91 



92 Ubc HHvine pursuit 

ness with its wild beasts. I am not without a 
place to lay my head. I am not brought like a 
lamb to the slaughter. Since, then, there is 
so much of His that can never be mine, I have 
all the more need to touch His life where He 
touches mine, and take that as the goal of all 
my striving. It is hard to live in these days 
with the Lord so far away, and with no final 
word of His for so many of the cares that per- 
plex me. Had I lived then or were He living 
now, how much more possible to be like Him ! 
His every deed and word would stand out clear 
to copy; the brightness of His example would 
illumine all my way. 

To argue thus is to mistake the nature of our 
calling. It is the glory of our religion that 
there is so little in the life of our Lord we can 
directly imitate. His outer life we can never 
live again. Our world is not His world ; new 
needs and problems confront us ; and in the 
maze of the modern world we would be 
as pilgrims without a guide, did we seek in 
our Lord for One whom we might in all 
things imitate. But, says the apostle else- 



ttbe /IMnb of dbrist 93 

where, "we have the mind of Christ"; and, 
having that, we have a power within us that 
will satisfy every need and solve every prob- 
lem. The apostle, who knew the frailty 
of the flesh as few have known it, could 
yet claim to have the mind of the Lord, and 
into possession of that mind he would urge us. 
And when we possess His mind, we will not 
imitate Him, because we will not need. Imi- 
tation is the insincerest flattery, the insincerest 
and the most indolent, for it is an appeal to 
externals, an appeal which it is the genius of 
Christianity to repudiate. Whatever we imi- 
tate, we betray. 

At all times in the history of the Church, 
great religious movements, which had a noble 
passion at the heart of them, have fallen into 
ridicule and ultimate ruin, because they looked 
more to the manner than to the mind of Christ, 
more to the detail which changes with the 
changing age, than to the mind, which abides, 
renews and transforms. 

But the dream, the imperative of the apos- 
tle, which thrilled while it seemed to mock us 



94 Ube 2>tvtne pursuit 

— "have that mind in yon" — has become in his 
own experience the soberest fact : ' ' We have 
the mind of Christ. ' ' In those two passages 
the Greek word and the context differ ; but the 
thought in both is much the same, that we 
weak and erring men may have within us the 
mind of Christ, that mind which seeks not its 
own, which knows no doubt and no unrest. 
Then there would be no feverish, spasmodic 
yearning to imitate this or that, but a slow, 
sure, quiet transformation of ourselves and of 
the world by the renewing of our mind. To 
live within the mind of Jesus Christ, to have 
that mind live within us, to look out upon the 
world with the eyes of Christ, would be to see 
all nature melt into glory, resplendent with the 
love of God. 

Had we but the mind of Christ, how beauti- 
ful upon mountain and meadow would the wild 
flowers be, each one of them fairer than Solo- 
mon in all his glory ! How tenderly would we 
see the fluttering life of the sparrow to be up- 
borne on the arms of eternal love! How 
pathetic would be the sight of men crowding 



Ube /IDtnD of Cbriat 95 

through the wide gate, and sauntering down 
the broad way that leadeth to destruction! 
How immeasurable would become the worth of 
the soul of every brother man, into whose eyes 
we looked with the eyes of Christ: of more 
value than many sparrows, yea, than the whole 
world! Had we but the mind of Christ, our 
hearts would fill with holy rapture at the 
vision of God. 

"My God! how wonderful Thou art, 
Thy Majesty how bright ! 
How beautiful Thy mercy-seat, 
In depths of burning light!" 



sing unto tbe 3Loto a new song.' 



A NEW SONG 

An old song can always count upon a wel- 
come, formal if not hearty. But a new song! 
Few have the courage to raise it, and many 
and loud and discordant are the voices that 
strive to drown it. The old songs are safe; 
they do not disturb the equanimity of the 
powers that be. To the majority a new song 
is a challenge to be answered by shouts if not 
execrations. At least such has been the re- 
ception which the religious world has usually 
accorded to new singers and their songs. 
Ears accustomed to celestial harmonies are 
chary of songs which might turn out to be 
earthborn. And wisely, for the new might be 
but a Siren voice which lures men to their de- 
struction. But the present has its gracious and 
inspiring melodies, as well as the past, and he 
that hath ears to hear, let him hear. 

Once there came a Singer from heaven to 
-LofC. " 



ioo Ube HHvfne pursuit 

earth. He brought with Him a sweeter song 
than mortal ear had ever heard before. For 
He sang of a royal Father's love and pity for 
all His wandering children, and of a peace into 
which men might enter who would become as 
little children. One or two listened, and won- 
dered, and followed. But the leaders of the 
Church would none of His song. It was too new, 
too strange, too improbable, too irritating, to 
those conventional ears. So they brought Him 
to a cross and howled at Him in His agony; 
and His new song was shouted down by a reck- 
less rabble. "Away with Him, away with 
Him, * ' they cried. And there the song seemed 
to end. 

But it was too true to die. Soon it was 
taken up again by a bold, brave singer. 
Stephen felt, as few to whom he ministered, 
that the message of Jesus was indeed a new 
song, that it ushered men into a richer, freer, 
fuller world than that into which they had been 
born. But those who listened to him cared 
little for a message which denied their fancied 
prerogative, and which shook their conven- 



a Bew Song 101 

tional belief in their Pentateuch. The song 
was new, and, therefore, heretical. They 
would not listen to one who spoke unconven- 
tional things about their Temple and their 
Bible, and the Jesus who was to change the 
customs which Moses delivered unto them. 
They had a rough and ready way of stopping 
the song. As he sang of the opened heavens 
"and the Son of man standing on the right 
hand of God, they cried out with a loud voice 
and stopped their ears, and rushed upon him 
with one accord ; and they cast him out of the 
city and stoned him." Often in life, and 
sometimes in death, it has gone hard with 
them, those singers of the new song. 

The singers might be slain, but the song 
could not cease. When Stephen died, "wit- 
nesses laid down their garments at the feet of 
a young man named Saul," and the echo of 
Stephen's dying song lived in this young man's 
heart. He, too, came in the providence of 
God to see that men were not saved by the law 
of Moses, and that Jesus was the Saviour of the 
Greek as well as of the Jew. Simple truths to 



102 TTbe Divine pursuit 

us ; but not simple, not even credible to the 
average man of that day, with his veneration 
for a misunderstood and misinterpreted past. 
So the great apostle is denounced as an arch- 
heretic, who "teacheth all men everywhere 
against the people, and the law. " And there is 
great uproar in the Holy City, and the people 
run together, and some shout one thing and 
some another, but all alike agree in shouting 
**Away with him!" Then he begins his great 
defence. They listen with toleration while 
the notes are familiar ; but when the first great 
unfamiliar note is struck, they reply to it with 
the shout of fiends, "Away with such a fellow 
from the earth : for it is not fit that he should 
live." 

But no shouting of cruel or silly mobs can 
permanently stifle the song of God. On it 
rang, more or less clearly, down the centuries, 
till in a dark time it seemed as if all holy 
melody was dead. Then a mighty voice broke 
the astonished silence, proclaiming that the 
forgiving grace of God could not be sold by 
huckstering priests, but was free to every sin- 



H 1Rew Sons 103 

ner who would in faith and penitence accept 
of it. Not a few welcomed the voice as God's. 
But some were in perplexity, and the highest 
religious authorities were for stifling it in fire 
and smoke. "As the matter seems to me," 
said a merchant of those days, "Luther must 
either be an angel from heaven or a devil from 
hell." And the Papal bull declared that all 
his books should be publicly burned, and that 
"as a stiff necked heretic, and a withered branch 
of the vine of Christ, he should be punished" 
with fire. The song was new; church and 
state must unite in suppressing it. It has ever 
been a crime to sing the new song. 

May it not be that our days are cast in just 
such another epoch? Many workers in many 
fields have been patiently and reverently study- 
ing the ways of God. They have seen how 
like Israel was in language and religion to her 
neighbors, and yet how unlike ; so unlike that 
only the finger of God could have shaped the 
difference. They have seen Israel take her 
place in the history of the great empires by 
which she was surrounded, and dark places in 



104 ZCbe HHvine pursuit 

her literature illuminated by the monuments 
of foreign kings. They have seen her religion 
purified by conflict and by revelation, so as to 
worthily prepare the way for Jesus. They have 
seen the increasing purpose that runs through 
all nature and all history. And now critics 
and historians, scientists and philosophers, 
smitten by the glory they have seen, are rais- 
ing a new song to the Lord for the wonders 
He hath wrought. It becomes us to beware 
lest we be numbered among those who would 
have stoned Stephen, and shouted to Paul, 
"Away with him. M 

Every old song was once new : in time every 
new song will be old. Truth is truth before it 
is universally acknowledged. If there is dan- 
ger in accepting that which is new, there is at 
least as much danger in rejecting it without 
examination : for we may thereby be found to 
be fighting against God. For any new light 
that He vouchsafes to our day and generation, 
we shall lift up united hearts of thankfulness 
to Him. As our souls rise on the visions of 
this book, with the new light of God upon it, 



a Mew Sono 105 

let us say with His ancient people, as they 
gratefully worshiped within the courts of 
their re-built Temple : 

"O sing unto the Lord a new song: 
Sing unto the Lord all the earth. 
Let the heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice." 



"Solomon in all bis Qlors was not 
arra^eD lifte one ot tbese." 



ONE OF THESE 

You cannot look upon a summer field or 

hillside — not, at least, if you have a heart at 

all — without thrilling in mysterious response 

to the gentle glory of the wild flowers which 

adorn it. But did you realize, as you looked, 

the debt you owed to each single flower, which 

lent its own separate glory to the total beauty 

that delighted you? In the field we must 

not forget the flower, for without the flower 

the field would not be what it is. Every flower 

has a life and history of its own, a life more 

real than that of the combination in which it 

stands. Every flower is clothed with a solitary 

glory of its own, which is more than a match 

for the most brilliant product of man's art. 

4 'Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; 

they toil not, neither do they spin ; yet Solomon 

in all his glory was not arrayed like one of 

these." 

You go into a wood and listen with delight 
109 



no Gbe H)ivine pursuit 

and wonder to the shower of melody that pours 
down from countless tiny throats. You hear 
the harmony, but you do not think of the sin- 
gle strains out of which it is woven. Yet 
every little songster has a life of his own, joys 
and cares and a music all his own. Little 
worth he may be in the eyes of the world: two 
for a farthing. When one falls, nobody knows 
and nobody cares. Nobody but God; and He 
cares for everyone. "Not one of them shall 
fall on the ground without your Father. ' ' 

The bird is more than the flower, for its life 
is richer. The child is more than either, for 
his capacity is all but infinite. He is made in 
the image of God. Out of his mouth may flow 
blessing or cursing. He has it in him to be 
angel or devil. A great gathering of innocent 
children may touch the eyes of a strong man 
to tears. But is it less than terrible to stand 
before a single child as father, teacher, pastor, 
and to feel that you bear upon your conscience 
the awful weight of his eternity? You may 
speak to thousands and but throw your words 
away. But whoso shall receive — and this 



©ne of Ubese m 

means loving, interested contact*— <?;/£ little 
child in Jesus' name receiveth Jesus; and 
whoso shall cause one of these little ones who 
believe on Him, in any way to stumble, by idle 
word or pernicious example, it were profitable 
for him that a great millstone be hanged about 
his neck, and that he be sunk in the depths of 
the sea. 

But more than to the child does a strange 
significance attach to the sinner. As the years 
grow, innocence droops, perhaps dies, He 
who was but lately a child goes forth into the 
unfeeling world. Boldly indifferent to Christ's 
curse upon the tempter, someone causes him 
to stumble ; or it may be the wild passions of 
his own heart. The power that is in him he 
has wielded for evil, and he falls. But he 
does not fall from the pity of God. In his 
loneliness he is remembered in heaven; and 
when he sets his face heavenward there is 
great joy there. For heaven knows, as earth 
can hardly know, the infinite value of a human 
soul. So "there is joy in the presence of the 
angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." 



H2 Ube SHvine pursuit 

Christ discovered the individual; let us see 
that we do not lose him again. His public 
work brought Him to the cross: His tender 
and separate dealing with the twelve, with 
each as best suited his nature, transformed 
them into men of invincible faith and courage, 
and insured for His gospel immortality. A 
woman at a well ; a ruler by night ; these were 
priceless opportunities to One who knew how 
dear to God was every being made in His 
image. The best and most lasting work is 
seldom, if ever, done in an appeal to the 
crowd: the effect is weakened because of the 
larger area over which it is dissipated. Men 
are not saved, any more than they are born, 
in crowds ; they are saved one by one. Statis- 
tics do not count in heaven; there is joy there 
over one sinner that repenteth. 

One of these ! A lily of the valley, a bird on 
the wing, a little child, an erring man: all 
precious, because all share, after their fashion, 
in the love of God. It is He who clothes the 
flower with glory, and upholds the bird in its 
flight. It was the Son of His love who took 



©ne of TEbese "3 

the little children in His arms, and gave His 
life at last for the ungodly. And shall we 
deny our pitiful measure of love to that which 
He loves so dearly — to the single soul, whose 
repentance would rejoice the angels of God? 
One of these little children who gather to our 
schools every day by the thousand, may pro- 
foundly affect the life and thought of his 
generation. One of these who vehemently 
deny their Lord, whether with oath or with 
argument, may yet, when he turn, establish 
his brethren. So we shall not despair of the 
smallest or the meanest. The very sight of 
them, with the thought of the unmeasured 
possibilities that lie before them, will urge us 
on. 

On all who serve the kingdom of God, 
whether in church or state, in school or fam- 
ily, the knowledge of the value of the indi- 
vidual lays a tremendous responsibility, and 
carries with it as profound an inspiration. 
Would it not call out the best that is in us, and 
would we not serve with joy and trembling, 
and would not all our work gain in directness 



H4 Ube HHvine pursuit 

and earnestness, did we allow ourselves to re- 
member that every man, however worldly- 
minded or profligate, every woman, however 
frivolous or sunken, was infinitely worth the 
striving for, and that over even one such, re- 
deemed from, folly, there was joy in the pres- 
ence of the angels of God? That schoolmaster 
must have put his soul into his work, who took 
off his cap to his boys every morning on enter- 
ing school, "as God had perhaps destined some 
of the boys to be a preacher or a learned doc- 
tor. ' ' Of that true teacher we know nothing 
more than the name, Johannes Trebonius: one 
of his pupils was Martin Luther. 

Those whose duty it is to address the crowd 
will remember that their work is less than 
half done unless it is inspired and followed up 
by earnest, pleading love for the individual 
soul. Those whose task is in the home — and 
this includes us all — will remember that there 
too, just where the responsibility is greatest, 
the opportunities are grandest. It lies largely 
with us to make the days of our dear ones bit- 
ter or glad. And shall we grieve or neglect 



©ne of Ubese 115 

the immortal souls commended to our love by 
Almighty God? It lies wholly with us to direct 
the dawning intelligence of the little children 
towards the things of God, and to foster in our 
youths and maidens the love of good and the 
horror of evil. And shall we, by our lack of 
care or conscience, cause them to stumble? 
Better for us that a millstone were hanged 
about our neck, and that we were sunk in the 
depths of the sea. 



" Strong to apprebenO witb all tbe 
saints wbat is tbe breaotb ano lengtb 
ano beigbt ano oeptb, ano to Know tbe 
love of Cbrist" 



WITH ALL THE SAINTS 

In two ways does Christ give man his true 
place. He sets him alone beside God, as a son 
beside his Father, and shows him the inde- 
feasible worth of his own soul, worth potential 
if not actual ; for do not the angels of God sing 
for joy over even one sinner that repenteth? 
But He also sets him in a fellowship. For 
with cords of love He has been drawing after 
Him, throughout the long centuries, a great 
multitude which no man can number; and all 
who are drawn of Him should have fellowship 
one with another. As I am bound by the 
tenderest ties to the A God who created me for 
His service, and the Savior who redeemed me, 
so I am bound by bonds as strong as they are 
invisible to all who have ever loved the Lord 
and shared the redemption which He wrought. 
It is not good, it is not possible for man to be 
alone. To be alone is to die. We are born 

for fellowship ; and our religion satisfies this 
119 



iso Ube HHvtne pursuit 

deep need of our nature by bringing us into a 
society, a kingdom, a church. We look into 
the friendly faces of those who worship with 
us, and we are strong. 

The great apostle bowed his knees in prayer 
to the Father for a well-beloved Church, that 
she might be strong to apprehend with all the 
saints what is the breadth and length and 
height and depth, and to know the love of 
Christ which passeth knowledge, that she 
might be filled unto all the fulness of God. 
Did ever so sane a man cherish an ambition so 
wild— "filled unto all the fulness of God?" 
Yet this ambition is not the extravagance of an 
over- wrought enthusiasm. The end is soberly 
set, and the means are adequate, because 
chosen in full view of the magnificence of the 
end. So noble a purpose demands for its ful- 
fillment nothing less than all the spiritual force 
available ; it may be accomplished only with 
all the saints. The heart leaps as the vision 
unfolds of the splendor of the destiny to which 
we are summoned, and of the goodly fellow- 
ship which presses on with us towards the 



WHftb all tbc Saints 121 

mark, and heartens us on the way by its 
strength, its experience, and its sympathy. 

The richest individual life is poor in compari- 
son with the manifold experience of "all the 
saints. "Of the Churches which call themselves 
catholic, what can compare in catholicity with 
that which includes all the saints, and places at 
the disposal of every struggling soul for its 
guidance and inspiration, all the wise thoughts 
with which they have ever been visited, all the 
heroic endurance, even unto death, with which 
they have sealed their testimony, all their love, 
hope, faith, joy, triumph, all their vision of 
eternal things unseen? 

All that is ours ; and yet it is not ours. For 
we will not appropriate it. Saints of other 
communions and distant lands come and lay 
their treasures at our feet, and we will not 
stoop to pick them up, because they "follow 
not with us." The fellowship of the saints is 
larger than either our experience or our imag- 
ination of it. That fellowship knows no de- 
nomination: it includes all who aspire to 
apprehend the breadth and length and height 



122 Ube Bivine pursuit 

and depth, and to know the love of Christ 
which passeth knowledge. Every saint needs 
every other, needs especially to supplement 
his own experience by experiences with which 
he is unfamiliar. His robust and practical 
piety may have to be softened into gentler 
lines of beauty by the unobtrusive grace more 
natural, perhaps, to another Church than to his 
own. The saint who dreams away his days in 
devout contemplation of the things above may 
have to learn from the saints of another Church 
that visions are for life, and gifts for service. 
We are debtors unto all the saints, especially 
unto those from whom we differ. 

Each saint reflects the love of God, as the 
sparkles of sunshine upon the rippling sea 
reflect the brightness of the sun. Each dazzling 
wavelet reflects his glory, but all together do 
not exhaust it. One saint hears God in the whirl- 
wind, another in the still, small voice. But 
neither can say to the other, "What need have 
I of thee?" for all have need of the heavenly 
voice, and must bid it welcome, whether it 
speak in thunder or in silence. There are saints 



TKIUtb all tbe Saints 123 

acknowledged and saints unacknowledged. 
But since fellowship with them is so vital to 
the fulness of our own life, shall we not at least 
— and that right early — enter into communion 
with those saints whose saintship is universally- 
acknowledged? Do we often suffer our stifled, 
panting souls to be revived by the ampler air 
of the evangelists? Have we been long enough 
in fellowship with St. John to despise our 
worldly-mindedness, and to be overmastered 
by the thought of the exceeding love of God? 
As we look across our selfish lives, can we 
listen without a stricken conscience to St. Paul 
as he assures us that he will glory in nothing 
save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ? 
Have we learnt the terrors of the day of the 
Lord from fellowship with Amos or Zephaniah? 
or from Hosea the majesty of love? Our lives 
are so poor, because we have so little fellow- 
ship with these and other saints of the new 
covenant, and of the old. 

Every Church has had her saints, and every 
epoch. It is for us to let them instruct and 
chasten us, counting nothing common or un- 



i2 4 TTbe Divine pursuit 

clean. Our life will be the richer when we 
know the story of their struggles, our fortitude 
will be encouraged by the sight of their 
fidelity, our wisdom will be matured by the 
study of their meditations. All the saints be- 
long to the whole Church of Christ; and that 
man robs himself of his inheritance who allows 
denominational jealousies or fears to govern 
the range of his sympathies. The streets of 
the city of God are exceeding broad. On them 
is room for the reconciliation of ancient 
enmities. Roman, Greek ; Episcopalian, 
Methodist, Presbyterian; Rahab, Babylon; 
Philistia, Tyre, Ethiopia; Glorious things are 
spoken of thee, O city of God! 

Every hymn-book is a testimony to our in- 
debtedness to the saints. There all little 
rivalries are lost. Hebrew kings, German 
reformers, Roman Catholic priests, Episco- 
palian bishops, Methodist evangelists, Presby- 
terian ministers, have all conspired to make us 
their debtors. In their harmonious shout of 
praise all petty discords die. As we sing those 
hymns, we step into that shining fellowship, 



mith all tbe Saints 125 

from which no power can excommunicate lis 
but our own little-mindedness and sin. We do 
not pray to the saints, as men once did; but we 
need them as sorely as ever, and must learn of 
them when and where we can. For they too 
knew the love of God; and it was for all the 
saints, and therefore for us too, that they 
wrought and spoke and wrote ; for the love of 
God constrained them. 



"Zhe epes of tbem botb were openeo, 
anb tbes Knew tbat tbeg were nafceb." 



THE OPEN EYE 

Whether the open eye be a blessing or a 
curse will depend upon the world upon which 
it is turned. For there are worlds and worlds. 
When God looked upon the world which He 
had made, He pronounced it very good, as 
every man must, too, who sees it as it is. But 
when man looks upon the world which he 
himself has made, he turns his eyes away with 
a shudder ; if, that is, he sees it as it is. The 
gift of sight is in itself no boon ; it is in the 
power of the devil to bestow. "In the day 
that ye eat thereof*' — such was the promise of 
the serpent — "then your eyes shall be opened." 
And he kept his word; for their eyes "were 
opened, and they knew that they were naked." 
Their eyes were opened upon their own 
nakedness, shame, confusion, ruin. 

The ambition to "see life" may be a noble 

one if cherished by a pure heart, honestly 

eager to learn the wonders and the ways of 
129 



13° XTbe H>ivine pursuit 

God, or to know the mind and manners of 
men, that, so far as in it lies, it may refine 
that mind and purify those manners. But 
that same ambition has cost many a man his 
soul. There are men who think that to see 
life is to see sin, to come under the spell of the 
world* s tawdry and evil splendor. The foul 
image of a poem, or the idle word of a friend 
who has just come from hell, reveals to us how 
blind we have been in the calm of our own 
domestic or social circle, and flashes upon us 
that great world of red passion, red not with 
the glow of health, but with the flare of the 
pit. A world of whose existence we had hardly 
dreamt, stands before us in all its baleful 
charm: in guilty delight we tremble as we 
gaze. We have sought knowledge and found 
it, and with it have found sure increase of sor- 
row. For, as our eyes are opened upon fasci- 
nating yet hideous possibilities, the peace and 
the purity which the children know take wings. 
We are left forever with tainted hearts and 
corrupted imaginations, and we curse the vi- 
sion which blasted our faith in woman and in 



XTbe ©pen JSyc 131 

man. Our eyes have been opened, but the 
sight has cost us dear. The eyes which open 
upon such a world close upon one of infinitely 
greater moment, open upon hell to close upon 
heaven and God. 

Will any man barter the possession of a life 
so fair for the sight of one so foul? Into life's 
holiest hours he brings hateful and disturbing 
memories; into the brunt of its battle which 
can only be fought with a heart of hope, he 
carries crippling cynicism, if not deadly re- 
morse. There is much in life on which a man 
must turn his back. But if he will see life, let 
him in fairness see the whole of it — not only 
the gilded sin on which he looks at the peril of 
his soul, but let him look too at the gracious 
charities of the home, at the uplifting and 
redeeming affection of man and maid for one 
another, at the unmurmuring generosity of 
some that are rich, at the silent patience of 
many that are poor, at the heroism of needy 
women and men in fierce temptation, at the 
slow, sure triumph of the Spirit of Jesus in 
the world. 



132 TLbc Divine pursuit 

Naked and not ashamed — that is the deepest 
depth of all ; but the quest of forbidden know- 
ledge which no pure man should have or even 
desire has done something for us, if it has 
shown us how naked we are. To face the bril- 
liant sins of the city and not to feel the shame 
of them, to detect the subtle affinity of our 
own hearts for evil and not to recoil in horror 
from the tragedy which has already begun, 
is to stand perilously near the edge of the 
precipice, over which if a man stumble he 
may never rise again. But once his eyes 
have been opened, whether by actual sin or 
only by the vision of it, to see that he is 
standing on the edge of a horrible pit, into 
which a push from behind by an evil spirit, 
clothed, mayhap, in a garment of light, may hurl 
him irretrievably, he will, if he be wise, leap 
back with a cry and a prayer to the God of the 
little children that he will not suffer his foot to 
slide any more. "Their eyes were opened, 
and they knew that they were naked," and 
straightway they sought to cover their shame. 
There is hope for the man into whose cheek 



Ube ©pen E$e 133 

the hot blush mounts when he stares face to 
face with the sin which has leaped forth from 
his inner life. And the horrid sight will bless 
him ere it go if it wake, as it can, within him 
the voice of conscience. For "they heard the 
voice of the Lord God, walking in the garden" 
— the very garden in which the taste of the for- 
bidden fruit had opened their eyes to their own 
shame. That voice speaks in many ways, 
through visions heavenly and visions diabolic, 
summoning us now by the beauty of holiness, 
now by the loathsomeness of sin. If the sight 
of our shame quicken conscience, and thereby 
lead to repentance, it will have wrought within 
us a good work, which may in time prepare us 
for the beatific vision. 

No man can at the same time see God and 
the world, any more than he can serve them 
both. He must choose. The devil never 
opens the eyes without, at the last, piercing 
the heart through with shame and sorrow, slay- 
ing its hopes, and blotting out its heaven. 
But blessed is the man whose eyes the Lord 
openeth. The vision of Jesus may at the first 



134 Zbc Divine pursuit 

strike us blind, as it did Saul of Tarsus — blind 
with sorrow and despair. But soon scales fall 
from the eyes that have been blessed by so 
gracious a visitation, and soon they shall see 
Him in His glory, willing and mighty to save. 
To look at Him with eyes that smile through 
tears of penitence, humility, and love is to be 
sure of His blessing; for "Blessed," said he, 
speaking of Himself and His work, "Blessed 
are the eyes which see the things that ye see. ' ' 
But he only can see Jesus who is intent on see- 
ing nothing else, he whose heart is aglow with 
one great pure purpose, to keep himself un- 
spotted from the world. Then allegiance is 
undivided and the heart is undistracted, and 
the eye is light ; and the eye that is light shall 
see clearly, see through life and death, time 
and eternity, see man and Christ and God. 
4 * Blessed are the pure in heart ; for they shall 
see God." 



"3esns stooo on tbe beacb; bowbeit 
tbe oisciples Fmew not tbat it was 
5esus." 



THE UNKNOWN JESUS 

Jesus is never far from those who love Him ; 
and yet how very far He often seems to be! 
When we walk along perilous or sorrowful 
ways, we feel not always the touch of His hand. 
When the mists settle about us, we see not 
always Him who is the Light of all our dark- 
ness. Strange and sad it is, that Jesus the 
Saviour, Jesus the Lover of my soul, should be 
near me, sharing and supporting my life, and 
that I should so often think of Him as far, far 
away. 

The pure in heart do not always see Him. 
Two friends walk by the way, and hold sweet, 
sad converse together touching the things that 
pertain to the crucified Lord of Life. A 
stranger joins them, and His words wake great 
thoughts in their hearts. The stranger is 
Jesus, and the men are lovers, almost worship- 
ers, of Him. Yet they know not that it is 
i$1 



138 Ube HHvine pursuit 

Jesus who has drawn near as they commune 
and question together: not even when He 
interprets to them, as He alone could, the 
things concerning Himself: not even when 
they constrain Him to abide with them, as the 
day is far spent. The Lord is in this place and 
they know it not. Tears of sorrow sometimes 
stand even in eyes that are given to watching 
for their Lord and hide from them the Saviour, 
whose gracious presence would have kept them 
glad, had they but looked on Him as He stood 
before them. On the Easter dawn, Mary 
beheld Jesus standing and knew not that it 
was Jesus. And, a little while after, on the 
break of another day, Jesus stood on the 
beach : and the disciples, who had companied 
with Him not one day, but many, knew not 
that it was Jesus. Sunken, like Mary, in our 
sorrow, or like the disciples, in the search for 
our daily bread, or like the sorrowful two on 
the way to Emmaus, in perplexed question- 
ings, we are met by a figure which loves to 
meet the sons of grief and toil and doubt. 
But we do not see it ; and if we did, only the 



Zbc XHnfenown Jesus 139 

few would know that it was Jesus. So we 
miss the fellowship with Him, and miss with it 
the strength and the great and solemn joy. 
Never yet was deep sorrow or brave work or 
earnest speech but the unseen Jesus was stand- 
ing by, with His gracious ministry of comfort 
and help and light. 

Now the secret of our failure to recognize 
Jesus is in part this; we do not know how 
deeply He and His are one. They are in Him 
and He in them. Therefore it need never be 
hard and we need never go far to see Jesus. 
If the Jesus who continually makes interces- 
sion for us hath passed through the heavens, 
this same Jesus — for He is not divided — is in 
all His brethren, even in the least: Himself, 
and not another. Therefore thou art inexcus- 
able, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest 
that we must ascend into heaven, that is, to 
bring Jesus down from above : for He is nigh 
thee, even in thine own brother. "I in him." 
Here is a vision of Jesus which the blindest 
may see ; and the sight of a brother lays upon 
us the weightiest obligation that can lie upon 



uo Ube H>ivine pursuit 

a lover of Jesus — to do for him what we would 
do for Jesus. To be cruel or harsh or even 
thoughtless to him is to persecute Jesus. Saul 
breathed slaughter against the faithful in the 
infant Church, and the glorious Jesus smote 
him with the soul-rending words which startled 
him into another life, "I am Jesus, whom thou 
persecutest. " Jesus suffers in the sufferings 
of them that are His. Let us therefore take 
earnest heed lest we speak a bitter word of one 
who loves the Lord, ordeal with him unkindly; 
for "inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these 
my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto 
Me. ' ' We see one who looks like a gardener, 
and, Mary-like, we know not that it is Jesus. 
We may neglect or patronize him, as suits our 
mood ; but we do not concern ourselves with 
him as we would with Jesus. So the vision 
comes and goes without blessing us, because of 
the blind eyes on which it has fallen. In every 
brother, be he gardener or artisan, we should 
discover not only an opportunity of service, 
but a vision of Jesus. "In the midst of you 
standeth one whom ye know not/' without 



Zbc TUnftnown Jesus 141 

gifts of intellect or grace of form, but — mark 
it well — it is Jesus. 

When the Lord seems far away, when we 
have no eyes for the Christ who visits us in 
every gracious thought and every stern experi- 
ence, we shall not fail to find Him among His 
people. Two cannot talk in the house or by 
the way about the things of God, without 
being visited by Jesus. Most of all in the 
house of prayer may we look upon His shining 
face. "For where two or three are gathered 
in my name, there am I. ' ■ 



" Jesus answered, 'are tbere not 
twelve bours tn tbe oayT" 



A TWELVE HOURS' DAY 

What shall we say to our Lord, when He 
asks us, as He asked of old, "Are there not 
twelve hours in the day?" Shall those search- 
ing words not strike us dumb, as we think of 
the follies that fill most hours of every day? 
Are there twelve hours in any day, are there 
six, is there even one, of brave work or patient 
fidelity, of loyal service or strenuous endeavor, 
of resolute purpose or honest battle? Powers 
seen and unseen conspire to rob us of the 
hours as they slip by, and vigilantly must we 
buy them back from the callousness and sloth 
that would destroy us. 

Every day, seem it long or seem it short, 
comes laden with its own twelve hours. How 
often has it to go away again, weighted with 
trifles and sighs, instead of with achievement 
that will endure, when "the fire shall prove 
each man's work of what sort it is." Every 
145 



146 ZEbe Divine pursuit 

living soul, however harassed by work or aban- 
doned to indolence, has his twelve hours in the 
day, none more, none less; though in insight 
into their meaning and grasp of their possibil- 
ities, man differs from man as heaven from 
hell. Time hangs on the hands of some. So 
they say. Oh, mystery of mysteries ! that, in a 
world where there is so much to do and know 
and fight and conquer, any man should think 
he had time enough and to spare. Others thrill 
on the threshold of a new day, as they that 
look for the salvation of God. They see in 
every hour a gift and a call ; a gift to be used 
for growth in all that is worthy, a call to pre- 
pare for the rest that remaineth. No man can 
have more time than he needs ; the longest life 
is not too long for the solemn tasks that are 
laid on every one. Nor is any man's day too 
short; has not God put twelve hours into it? 
and only for those twelve hours, though indeed 
for them all, will He call him to judgment. 

44 And if indeed there be twelve whole hours 
in the day," says the Sluggard, 44 may not one 
little hour be spared for folly?" Nay, verily; 



H twelve fours' 2>as 147 

for every hour has its own claims, and will bless 
us or curse us, according as we let it. The 
hour gone is like the word spoken : you cannot 
call it back again. Twelve winged hours came 
yesterday from God, and sped across our day, 
and hasted back to the God who sent them. 
Would we have blushed could we have listened 
to the tale they told Him? Did they tell of 
kindnesses undone, of passions unsubdued, of 
prayers unsaid, of holiness unsought? Or did 
they tell of temper sweetened, and sins slain, 
and graces won? Every day should build us 
up, set us higher, in faith or knowledge or 
power. 

The tragedy of many a life is that time is 
not felt to be a trust ; it is not seen to be the 
stage on which issues of eternal moment are 
wrought out. What are we doing with the 
hours to-day? They are bearing us inexorably 
on nearer to the night, when no man can 
work; are they bringing us nearer to God 
or to the outer darkness, where there is 
weeping? Do the days leave us better or only 
older? Are we drifting or marching? Are we 



148 Zhc Wivinc pursuit 

driven about by every wind of indolence or 
frivolity, or are our faces set steadfastly 
toward some good thing? Heaven aids the 
man who listens to the voices of eternity call- 
ing across the dull routine of daily toil. The 
sun himself stands still for all who will nobly 
dare in life's great battle for righteousness or 
man or God. The day will be long, and the 
sun will shine on brave and weary warriors 
and light them into eventide. In this light of 
God may we all walk and work and pray, not 
now and then, but the long day through. For 
are there not twelve hours in the day? and 
the night is coming 



"Ube nicjbt cometb, wben no man can 
work." 



THE COMING NIGHT 

It was Jesus who assured us that God was 
the God of the living, not of the dead; yet it 
was Jesus who told us that the night was coming. 
In the glamour and fretful haste of the day, 
we too often forget the blackness of the night 
into which it is rushing, and thereby lose all 
the directness and concentration of aim, which 
would chase away the terror of the night when 
it falls. And yet terror there should be none ; 
for in the beginning God ordained that in every 
night the moon and the stars should shine, and 
no night can be very dark into which Christ 
the Light has passed. Yet, with all its gra- 
cious possibilities, it is night that awaits us. 
The longest day dies into night, and though 
out of the darkness a new day will be born, yet 
that darkness is the grave of a day that is 
gone. Into the other world Christ looked with 
eyes that saw beyond the darkness, yet He felt 
151 



152 Ube HJivine pursuit 

the awful power of the night that was coming. 
To Him the pathos of that night was not that 
it was dark, nor that it was long, nor yet that 
it was lonely, but that men could do no work 
in it. Into that night the workman cannot 
carry his tools, nor the writer his pen, nor the 
preacher his message. So, if we will not spend 
ourselves while it is day, we must lose our- 
selves and vanish into the advancing night. 

Seeing, then, that the night is coming, what 
manner of persons ought we to be? Workers, 
says Jesus. It will be a solemn thing to walk 
through the lonely night; is it any less solemn 
a thing to stand within the sunshine and to feel 
it slipping from us moment by moment into 
twilight and evening? The day is ours, but 
not forever: ''"while it is day we must work; 
the night cometh. " That is the logic of Jesus. 
The shortness of the day and the vastness of 
the work, and the inexorable stillness of the 
night strike us with such a sense of the frailty 
of man and the pity of things that we might 
well fold our hands before the mystery of life 
in reverent and submissive wonder. Not so 



tTbe CominQ IRigbt 153 

Jesus. He will not have us fold our hands, 
but rather grasp our tools, whatever they be, 
and work and work, with the awe of the com- 
ing night upon us. 

And what an inspiration may be ours! 
Though this little life is hedged about by 
so much pathos, it may yet be very strong. 
For the work which Christ appeals to us to 
do is not left to our single-handed weakness 
or timidity. We are sustained by the ex- 
ample and the co-operation of a goodly 
fellowship, the goodliest and mightiest fellow- 
ship that ever banded together to cheer a faint- 
ing soul; no less a fellowship than God and 
Christ and all things. "For my Father work- 
eth even until now/' said Jesus — no night for 
Him — "and I work," and "all things" said 
His apostle, "work together." Was ever 
band of workers like this: God, His Son, and 
all His universe, working forever, working 
together, for good? 

Should the thought of that magnificent, 
harmonious fellowship, whose work is from 
everlasting to everlasting, marching trium- 



iS4 Ube H)tx>ine pursuit 

phantly on through the generations, not brace 
the weakest will, strengthen the faintest 
heart, nerve the slackest hands of men 
whose day at the longest is short and rounded 
with a sleep? So Christ's appeal is charged 
with all the forces of heaven and of earth, 
when He says, "We" — not I, as the Authorized 
Version has it — "we must work the works of 
Him that sent me." We — for He is not 
ashamed to call us brethren; and we, His 
brethren, must work. The divine necessity 
lies upon men whose hearts can be touched by 
an appeal of Christ, and by the weird power of 
the night that is coming to bring to an end all 
the work of the day, be it never so faithful and 
never so earnest. At the close of a life that 
seemed baffled, Jesus could say, "I glorified 
Thee on the earth, having accomplished the 
work Thou hast given me to do. ' ' And when 
our day is over and the night has fallen about 
us, will the work that was ours to do be done? 



"1 am come Down from beaven.' 



THE DESCENT OF JESUS 

There was a time when men were ambitions 
to scale the heavens. They songht to build 
themselves a city and a tower whose top would 
reach the sky. But that was when the world 
was young. Flung from the heights, not all 
too high, which they had won, they came to 
learn that if heaven and earth were ever to 
meet, heaven must come down, for earth could 
not rise. 

A traveler lays down his weary head on a 
pillow of stone, and heaven is far enough away. 
Duplicity and ambition have all but broken 
the wings on which his soul might have soared 
away. Yet heaven stoops to him, if he cannot 
rise to her; and on a ladder of sorrow and 
silence the angels of God descend. 

How men tremble with delight and hope 

when they see an angel of God descending! 

It is so to-day. It was so in the old world 

when, in the persons of Paul and Barnabas, 

157 



158 TEbe Bivine pursuit 

the gods seemed to the men of Lystra to have 
come down in the likeness of men. The 
people were wrong; and yet were they alto- 
gether wrong? For it is a godlike thing to 
descend; and the angels of God — then, and 
now, and evermore — come down in the like- 
ness of men. Nay, did not Jesus Himself, 
being in the form of God, come "in the like- 
ness of man"? History, so far as it has meant 
progress, has just been the descent of heaven 
upon the earth. If on one side it has been the 
effort of aspiring man, on the other it has been 
the grace of the condescending God. The 
renovated world seemed to the seer of Patmos 
to be just the Holy City "coming down out of 
heaven from God. " 

The Bible presents the vision of a possible 
ascent of man; it is still more the story of the 
descent of God. From the heights which it 
discloses God and His angels are continually 
seen descending for their beneficent work, 
now to rouse the conscience of those who have 
eaten of forbidden fruit, now to assure prophet 
or warrior of heavenly help. 



Ube descent of Jesus 159 

But of all the strange descents of heaven upon 
toiling or disheartened men, surely none is so 
strange or so blessed as the descent of Jesus. 
Who may tell the heights from which He came? 
"I am come down from heaven/' That is all 
He says. Majestic silence no less than majes- 
tic speech ! He came down to a world worn 
by superstition and speculation, down to men 
out of whom the spirit had been crushed by 
oppression and priestcraft, down to "deep 
weariness and sated lust." And into this cor- 
ruption and decay, heartlessness, indifference, 
despair, He brought life. The nobleman who 
said to Jesus, u Come down ere my child die," 
is but an emblem of that ancient world, voic- 
ing her own helplessness to heal her children, 
and uttering her great inarticulate cry to the 
Jesus who alone could save her from folly, 
shame, and suicide. Nay, is it not the cry of 
all the nobler spirits to-day, who look with sor- 
row upon a civilization that sends the weakest 
to the wall, upon a religion whose heart the 
Lord hath not touched, upon international 
friendships that are hollow, upon a stage that 



160 Xlbe HHvine pursuit 

is degraded and degrading? Those who have 
not let Jesus come down into their hearts know 
the distemper, but do not rightly know its 
cure. But surely the dumb voices of the 
people, if they could break through their per- 
plexity and speak, would say, " Jesus, come 
down, ere we and our children die." Nothing 
but the Highest — and the Highest is Jesus — 
can save us. The Highest must stoop and lift 
us up or we shall die. " Jesus, come down. " 

But the Highest has stooped; stooped from 
the heights to the blackest depths. Jesus 
descended fearlessly into all the experience 
that has made men bitter and revengeful ; into 
poverty, unpopularity, defeat, shame, death, 
till He reached that obedience and perfection, 
which can only be learned by the things which 
men suffer. The seeming descent was but the 
royal way to heaven. By coming down Jesus 
redeemed and transfigured our earthly life and 
made it possible* for us to find our heaven in 
the depths as well as on the heights. 

Jesus came down; and in any depths we 
shall find Him. Our doubts He meets with 



Zhc Descent of Jesus 161 

His certainties; our worldliness He rebukes 
with His silent look of baffled love; our 
despondency He casts out by His revelation of 
a love that will not let us go; our orphaned 
hearts He heals by the visions of mansions 
where those that are lost to us are gathered 
together. And is all this nothing to you, O 
ye that pass by? He stooped to share all that 
vexes and tempts and hurts us. With such a 
fellowship in the depths, who can doubt or 
faint or fear any more? He descended into 
the lowest parts of the earth, lower than any 
other son of man has known or can know, and 
44 He that descended is the same also that 
ascended/' Shall we, then, who have had the 
glory of walking with Him in the depths, not 
also with Him " ascend far above all the 
heavens?" 



"flDoses safo unto <3oo, Wbo am U 
tbat H sboulo go unto pbaraob?" 



WHO AM I? 

Every moment tests. But there come to 
most men supreme moments, when far-reach- 
ing decisions have to be swiftly made. And it 
is then, when we are surprised by a great 
opportunity which may cost self-denial and 
tears, it is then that we learn what manner of 
men we are: — whether we can bravely trust 
the voice which calls us and step out of our 
happy repose into a duty whose greatness ap- 
pals us, or whether we have that more tragic 
courage to brave the ruin which one day is sure 
to overwhelm the man who disobeys the heav- 
enly voice when it says, "Come now, and I 
will send thee. " The sight of some great 
need which our hand or our voice might help 
to redress ; of some great duty towards which 
an unseen hand has been leading us, though 
we knew it not till it was upon us ; the eager 
voices calling from without, seconded by the 
165 



166 Ube Wivinc pursuit 

almost irresistible voice within ; these are signs 
which a sober man will consider with trem- 
bling before he disobeys. For that is God's 
way of calling men. 

Yet half in humility, half in terror, we fling 
back the unwelcome obligation which has dis- 
turbed us. "Who am I that I should go?" 
Nor need that be an unworthy cry. We hesi- 
tate, in part because we are not brave enough 
to obey, in part also because we are not sunken 
enough to ignore or reject outright a voice 
which might be God's. A base soul would not 
care, would hear no voice, feel no obligation, 
though it threw itself with all its might against 
him. In the reluctance and the self-distrust 
there lie the possibilities of victory. In such a 
mood if a man does not sink to despair, he 
will rise to indefatigable effort, it may be to a 
magnificent triumph. For the question "Who 
am I?" betraying as it does a consciousness of 
personal insufficiency, may lead a man to One 
that is higher than himself. He who asks such 
a question in sincerity has measured his own 
littleness against the majesty of the task which 



Wbo am H? 167 

summons him and has found himself wanting. 
No success is possible unless to him who feels 
that in his own strength it is impossible. It 
is the greatest who shrink. 

But humility must be reinforced by faith 
and courage, or it is not only vain, but dis- 
astrous. If anything could be more tragic 
than pride, it is mistaken humility. The 
proud man injures himself; the victim of 
an exaggerated humility injures the world, by 
depriving it of the service he is fitted to 
offer. He misses his chance of laying a stone 
in the walls of the Eternal City, and lays up 
for himself remorse and sorrow. For the 
work which he has neglected is not only his, 
but God's. It was his blessed privilege to be, 
in some corner of the universe, the represent- 
ative of the Most High God. And he has 
waived it aside, however sadly and sincerely, 
with the words, ( * Who am I V ' But it is through 
the men whom He enlists in His service that 
God works upon His world. '* "J am come 
down/' He says to Moses, "to deliver them 
out of the hand of the Egyptians.' ' And soon 



168 Zbc SMvine pursuit 

it becomes clear how He delivers. "Come 
now therefore, and I will send thee unto 
Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth My 
people." 

Then if the work be God's, may not the work- 
man count upon His help? In measuring the 
magnitude of his task, he must not forget the 
inexhaustible resources from which he can 
draw; and with such help, he need no more 
say to the duty which importunately pleads, 
"Who am I that I should go?" For that 
would be to forget and dishonor the God who 
has pledged His eternal word, "Certainly I 
will be with thee." Well might a mortal 
tremble and refuse, when summoned to appear 
before the terrible presence of Pharaoh ; but 
not surely if he knew that behind and beside 
him was God. 

If you are a brave and honest man, some- 
where you are needed sorely. If you have not 
yet heard a call, one is sure to come some day, 
which will test whether your heart be cleansed 
of its conflicting purposes. Then some task, 
on which perhaps issues of great moment may 



TWlbo am 11 ? J69 

depend, will be let down to yon from heaven, 
or will rise np at your feet and compel you to 
face it. Hard it may seem, inflexible as 
Pharaoh. You may have to leave all you love 
and risk your life for Jesus' sake in a foreign 
land. Or you may have to face the obloquy of 
society or the ruin of your popularity in de- 
nouncing some great wrong which is eating 
the heart out of the body politic or religious. 
Or you may have, under circumstances of 
peculiar delicacy, to offer a strong word of ten- 
der warning to one who is forgetting that 
there is a future and a judgment. Or you 
may have to confront an emergency which no 
one knows of but yourself and God, but which 
puts to the strain all the bravery and fidelity 
you have. That is your opportunity. It is 
also your peril. There you prove yourself a 
man or a coward : there you launch on a sea 
of service or you wreck. "Who am I?" yau 
ask. This at the least: a servant who has 
heard clearly enough the call of his Master to 
go forth to that very work, the sight of which 
makes your heart faint and sore. Your disci- 



170 Xlbe Divine pursuit 

pline has specially fitted you for it. You are 
not where you are for nothing. 

No one but Moses could have faced Pharaoh ; 
for no one was prepared and equipped as he. 
Had he fallen before his scruple the whole 
world from that day to this would have been 
the loser. He who does not emerge from the 
struggle with his selfishness and timidity a 
victor, is a ruined and remorseful man ; he has 
lost his chance of making history. But against 
any Pharaoh the weakest may go with con- 
fidence when he sustains his heart by the divine 
assurance " Certainly I will be with thee." So 
he will bless the world and deliver his own soul. 



"ft ang man woulo come after me, let 
btm oenp btmselt" 



THE DENIAL OF SELF 

Do the great watchwords of the Christian 
faith possess and compel men as once they 
did? The faith that can remove mountains is 
not ours; the charity which was once the 
greatest of the three abiding things, has sunk 
to almsgiving; the denial of self, which is the 
royal road to the Kingdom of God, has become 
the denial only of certain things we love. 
How easy it is to drag down the soaring 
thoughts of Jesus, or St. Paul to our meaner 
level, and to empty noble words of their ex- 
acting and divine demands ! 

It is a commonplace that the Christian must 
deny himself ; but it is not a commonplace that 
the Christian must deny himself. That which 
he is pledged to deny is himself. The thor- 
oughness which the gospel imposes upon every 
man and in every sphere is as obligatory here 
as anywhere. The denial of self is apt to be 
173 



174 Ube Divine pursuit 

translated into terms of easier import. It is 
not the denial of certain pleasures, nor even of 
all, nor necessarily of any. It is the denial of 
the self that lies behind all pleasures and pur- 
suits. It is the deliberate refusal to regard our 
individual life as a life with interests of its 
own, and the seeing of it only as an instru- 
ment of God and a contribution to His king- 
dom. It is the seeking first and always the 
Kingdom, never interests of our own, in the 
confident hope that all interests of ours worth 
conserving will find a place within it. 

Self-denial is thus not doing without things, 
nor reducing life to a beggarly minimum. It 
is the unflinching surrender of self to the needs 
of the Kingdom and the call of Christ ; such a 
spirit as breathed through the intrepid words 
of the apostle: "I hold not my life of any 
account, as dear unto myself, so that I may 
accomplish my course, and the ministry which 
I received from the Lord Jesus." Thus we 
belittle this great call of Christ to self-denial 
when we interpret it merely as a call to give 
up this or that. Doubtless that will be one of 



XTbe H)ental of Self 175 

its great effects upon us ; and in that the world 
will find evidence that we have been with 
Jesus. But His call is infinitely more search- 
ing. It pierces to the heart and asks who has 
been denied there — self or Jesus? "If any 
man would come after me, let him deny him- 
self.' ' We cannot both follow Christ and 
assert ourselves. 

There, then, is the secret of peace and im- 
mortality — to deal with ourselves, as the claims 
and problems of life arise, as if we had no 
interest to consider but Christ and the King- 
dom. The beauty, the peace, the power of 
life, are withered by selfishness; and selfish- 
ness, let us remember, is a deeper and subtler 
thing than greed ; it is the fatal temper that 
considers self. And this temper may reveal 
itself as tragically in abstinence as in indulg- 
ence. For if it be not for Christ and the King- 
dom's sake that we abstain, it is for our own; 
and that is not the denial, but the assertion of 
self. Time was when men tormented them- 
selves, and lashed their poor bodies, already 
worn with fasting and vigils, till the blood 



176 TEbe Divine pursuit 

came, thinking thereby to be doing God serv- 
ice. Is it not sad to think of so fierce an 
earnestness spent upon the mutilation of that 
wondrous temple of the living God? It was 
indeed, a holy impulse that drove men thus to 
mortify the flesh ; holy but selfish. For, at the 
heart of it, was it not a wild terror that the 
soul that did not scourge itself into agony, 
would be lost? 

Both for good and for evil, we do not to-day 
know so much of those deadly struggles, where 
a man who would win salvation, would wrestle 
with himself in deadliest grip, and resist even 
unto blood. But we vex ourselves in subtler 
ways. We fret about our scanty progress, our 
slender triumphs, our many defeats, instead of 
marching on after Christ into that larger life 
of service, in which love is all and self is for- 
gotten. What is all our fretting but a more 
exquisite selfishness? Care can only be ban- 
ished, and completeness come into the life, by 
a divine forgetfulness of self, and an un- 
compromising surrender to Christ, in whom 
alone we truly live. 



Ube H)enial of Self 177 

But shall we not then, asks some strong and 
self-reliant one, be but phantoms of our real 
selves, when we yield up, without reserve or 
murmur, all that makes us what we are? Is 
that not to shrivel our personality? Shall we 
not be losing ourselves? We speak sorrowfully 
of the sacrifices to be made, comfort ourselves 
with the hope of a great reward, and resign 
ourselves, half regretfully, to the service which 
almost seems to cost too dear. "We have left all 
and followed Thee; what then shall we have?" 
Shame upon us that we speak of resignation — 
we that have been called out of the darkness 
and impotency of a selfish life into the marvel- 
ous light and power of a higher service, that 
elicits and develops all that is best in us and 
rewards us with fellowships an hundred fold in 
this life, and in the world to come life ever- 
lasting. In this surrender, we lose nothing — 
nothing but our own foolish selves, which we 
lose to find again in undreamt plenitude of 
power. He that so loses his life finds it — 
quivering with rekindled inspiration, purified, 
transfigured. If any man would follow Him, 



178 Zhc HHvine pursuit 

and set his eyes steadfastly upon that shining 
figure going on before, he could not but forget 
and deny himself, and count all things but loss 
if so he might find Him. 

Only the soul that denies itself enjoys that 
peace which passeth all understanding. How 
men spoil their lives by their dainty, and, as 
they deem, clever adjustment of interests — 
4 'some of self, and some of Thee!" If we 
could but learn to forget that we have inter- 
ests of our own, or rather, could believe in 
our hearts that we have no real interests but in 
doing the will of God, how beautiful a peace 
might fill our lives! For want of this insight, 
Napoleon spent his latter days upon a lonely 
island, washed by the pitiless sea. When we 
stand at the parting of the ways, how easy it 
would be to choose, could we but consider our- 
selves as here only for the Kingdom's sake! 
Such a single-hearted soul would never come 
to cross-ways in his life. He could have no 
way which was not Christ's. His feet would 
always be on the tracks of the Shining One — 
that narrow way, but sure, that leadeth on to 
God and immortality. 



'• H better country, tbat is, a beavenls." 



ANOTHER COUNTRY 

How lonely would life be without our dead! 
If they could pass from memory and imagina- 
tion as they pass from sight, the fountain of 
many an inspiration would dry up, and many a 
life would wither. Often in the crowd their 
quiet faces look down upon us in gentle pity, 
bidding us be brave and worthy of the ever- 
lasting rest which now is theirs, and in the 
night watches, when all is still, their voices 
come back upon us with all the clearness of 
life, yet with the mysterious power of another 
world. The living we shall lose, but the dead 
we have found, never to lose again. Theirs is 
the peace unshaken, and the world that stand- 
eth fast. In communion with the blessed 
dead, we are lifted above the cares and con- 
fusions of this world into the realization of our 
citizenship in the Eternal City. They redeem 

life from its littleness by shedding upon it the 
181 



182 XTbe Wivinc pursuit 

solemn glories of eternity. In their presence 
all passion dies ; in their silent fellowship our 
hearts burn with holy yearnings ; in that brief 
hour of unspeakable communion the world 
passes, and we feel what it is to stand within 
the halls of our heavenly home. 

The world passes! But not easily; for its 
hold upon us is firm, and it bears us along 
with it. Late and soon, it is too much with 
us ; and it is well it is needful to remember 
our dead. We go forth to our work until the 
evening. Our hands are full of toil, and our 
hearts of care. The claims and pleasures of the 
passing day drain all the energy and sympathy 
out of us. We become stolidly content with 
the friends about us and too easily forget those 
who have gone before. The dying request, 
the passionate farewell, the sunken, pleading 
eyes looking out already from another world, 
the low, broken words that were all but lost 
upon the straining ear; surely, surely, these 
moments and memories would belong to the 
things that abide. 

Yet, is it so? If it were so, would men and 



Hnotber Country * 8 3 

women be as they are? Would life be so pas- 
sionless, duty so loveless, hope so dead? We 
have all lost, and in the loss we might all have 
won. But have we? We have all links that 
should strongly bind us to the eternal world ; 
do we often feel thus bound or drawn thither? 
Is it less than tragic — the ease with which we 
forget promises the most solemn, memories the 
most sacred, scenes the most tender? The 
world smiles when our heart is breaking. But 
by-and-by we smile, too, with the world. 
And it is well: for Jesus came that our joy 
might be full, and that tears might be dried 
from the faces of sorrow. But is it possible 
that such an experience can leave an earnest 
man as it finds him? Can the other world 
thus look in upon him without touching him to 
awe? And ought not the awe which touched 
him to haunt him forever till he penetrates its 
secrets for himself? The deep experiences 
which might have chastened and ushered us 
into an ampler world impress us too often 
only as the ship impresses the sea. Forbid, 
O Lord ! that we forget. 



184 Ube HJfvine pursuit 

We forget, sometimes, because our natures 
are shallow and all experiences that do not 
touch our skin are lost upon us. Sometimes 
because the cares of the world and the strug- 
gle for wealth and the lusts of other things 
enter in and choke every influence and memory 
that would help to redeem us. Sometimes we 
forget because we are at no pains to remem- 
ber. And this indifference costs us dear. We 
lose thereby our sense of perspective in life, 
thinking too highly of the things that are seen 
and too little of the greater things unseen. 
We lose that other- worldliness which imparts 
to character a tender and gracious beauty. 
We lose our familiarity with the facts which 
we ourselves shall have to face, and for which 
we need to prepare in meditation and silence. 

So we cannot live our highest life without 
our dead. The thought of them will possess 
us with the conviction of eternity and home. 
For here we are strangers and pilgrims, and as 
they that shift their tents in the wilderness ; 
and we look across the dream of this life for a 
better country, that is, an heavenly, and for a 



Hnotber Country l8 5 

city which hath the foundations, whose builder 
and maker is God, and most of whose inhab- 
itants are those whom we call the dead. Ours 
is the shadowland, not theirs. Ours is the 
world that shall pass ; but theirs abides. For 
Jesus is alive for evermore, and all His people, 
the living and the dead, do live in Him. 

Let us then join the Church of Christ 
throughout the world in commemorating the 
dead ; all whose wisdom or courage or faithful- 
ness yet speaks to us and blesses these our 
earthly days ; and not least let us bear in mind 
and heart all with whom we ourselves ever 
took sweet counsel together, but who are with 
us no more. Let us touch again their vanished 
hands, and listen once more to the sound of the 
voices that are still. Those hands will not 
only beckon us but lift us above the dust and 
din into that peace which no ambition mars ; 
those voices will be to us as the music of the 
angels of God. Thus heaven will be near, and 
life will be great, and death will take us home. 



"Uf tbe foundations be bestroseb." 



SHATTERED FOUNDATIONS 

44 If the foundations be destroyed, what can 
the righteous do?" Such words rise too easily 
to the lips of men who stand before the threat- 
ened ruin of the faith they love. Strong, clear 
faith never asks such a question ; nor yet that 
other question which more adequately repre- 
sents the Hebrew words of the Psalm, "If the 
foundations be destroyed — what has the right- 
eous done?" that is, what will he, with all his 
righteousness, be found to have accomplished? 
It is not a question which a good man puts to 
his own heart, as he looks out in despair upon 
times full of confusion and skepticism. It is 
the cowardly cry of men who prefer safety to 
struggle, ease to strenuousness, flight to oppo- 
sition. "Flee," says the coward, "to the 
mountain as a bird. For see! the wicked are 
bending the bow, they have already set their 

arrow on the string, to shoot in the dark at the 
189 



190 Ube Bivfne pursuit 

upright. If the foundations be destroyed' ' — 
this is the crowning argument for flight — ■ 
"what has the righteous accomplished? His 
struggle has been in vain. " The dangers and 
the futility of opposition are painted vividly 
enough ; but they do not terrify the imagina- 
tion or shake the faith of him who puts his 
trust in God. He flings back the cowardly 
challenge with triumphant defiance. M The 
Lord is in His holy temple. The Lord — His 
throne is in heaven. . . . He will rain upon 
the wicked coals of fire and brimstone . . . 
The upright shall behold His face. ' ' 

Here is a soul delivered by her clear-sighted 
faith from her wrestlings with temptation, 
comforted by the assurance that, despite all 
wrong and confusion, there is justice in 
heaven, which will swoop down upon the world 
of wickedness on the wings of elemental 
powers ; and she is strengthened to bear what 
must be borne in the sure hope that the pure 
in heart shall look upon the face of God. What 
is it to such a soul that earthly foundations 
seem to quaver? Heaven standeth fast with 



©batterer jfoun&ations 191 

its justice and its God, whose eyes watch all 
that men do evermore. Evil cannot touch 
Him whose weapons are the elements, fire and 
brimstone and glowing wind, neither can it 
touch those who put their trust in Him. To 
the counsels of cowardice the Psalmist replies 
with his answer of faith, "The Lord is in His 
holy temple. The Lord—His throne is in 
heaven." What to him were the mountains 
who had heaven and its Lord for his refuge? 
What were bows bent by the wicked and ar- 
rows set upon the string for their cruel flight, 
to him on whose side fought the God of the 
storm? What was the darkness that seemed to 
shield schemes of wickedness, to him on whom 
streamed light from God's own face? What 
was the seeming shattering of foundations to 
him whose foundation was God? 

It is an ancient struggle that of faith with 
despair. But those who have named the name 
of Christ are bound by the love they bear Him 
to look upon their victory as certain. How 
foolish look the bows and arrows of men when 
matched against the lightning and the thunder- 



19^ ZEbe Wivinc pursuit 

bolts of God! Good men need never tremble 
for the foundations. The only foundations for 
which they need greatly care are indestructible, 
sure and eternal as God. Once and again has 
it seemed as if the faith which is dearer to 
many than life were to be shivered by the 
sharp swords of persecution or by the deadlier 
assaults of speculation. And once and again 
has God shown Himself in His heaven, fulfill- 
ing His word sometimes by fire and hail and 
stormy wind, sometimes by the words of men 
who brought the world back again to truth 
and peace. 

The foundations are laid deep ; neither man 
nor devil can reach them. All that God builds 
is built upon a rock. Rains may fall and 
floods may come and winds may blow, but they 
only show how strong is the house of God's 
building. The fury of hell will lash itself in 
vain against Christ's Church; for He built it 
upon a rock. When foundations are shattered, 
it is time that they were removed; for not on 
such can men build for eternity. We with our 
immortal souls must see to it that we build 



©batterer JFoun&atfons 193 

upon unassailable foundations. And see ! the 
work goes on apace. Gaze long enough at the 
ruins which fill the world and all but break the 
heart of Hope herself; and rising above them, 
behold ! the shining walls of the city of God, 
behold! the city, with her bulwarks, and her 
people and her King. It will be time enough 
for the righteous to despond when the founda- 
tions begin to tremble. But neither in this 
nor in any other world can such a thing be. 
For they are eternal as the love of God, deep 
and broad as the grace of Christ. When the 
foundations seem to reel, it is not they but we 
who are reeling. Our faith is not rooted and 
grounded, if the tempests of social revolution 
or the storms of criticism can so lightly sweep 
it away. Do we doubt the foundations, and do 
we fear for the fate of the righteous? Then 
men are mightier than God, and God cannot 
take care of those who love Him, and of the 
cause that is His, and He is not the Father 
Almighty. 

The foundations of the Christian faith are 
buried deep in the facts of history — in the im- 



194 Xtbe Bivtne pursuit 

mortal message of the prophets, in the life and 
death and resurrection of our Lord, in the rapid 
and manifest triumph of His gospel. The 
voice of history, as well as of the Psalmist, 
proclaims "The Lord is in His holy temple. 
The Lord— His throne is in heaven.' ' And 
Jesus Christ, we believe, is sitting at His right 
hand. Can then the future be a terror when 
the past has again and again seen our faith 
victoriously meet shocks the most furious and 
cruel, and when all power in heaven and on 
earth has been given to the Lord in whom we 
trust? I believe and am persuaded that the 
foundations shall abide. 



"(Soooness ano meres sball pursue 
me all tbe oass of mg life," 



THE DIVINE PURSUIT 

God is the same forever; but that sameness 
is neither monotonous nor passionless; it is the 
constancy of a sleepless enthusiasm for men. 
44 Goodness and mercy shall pursue me," says 
the Psalmist. God's love is earnest, as earnest 
as the deadly battle-hate — for the Hebrew 
word means that. He pursues us with the 
zeal of a foe, and the love of a Father; pur- 
sues us <4 throughout the length of days'" with 
a divine impatience that is never faint and 
never weary. He is not content to follow us ; 
He pursues us, because He means to find us. 
Behind the loneliest man is a lovely apparition ; 
nay, no apparition, but angels twain, Goodness 
and Mercy, shielding and urging him on. 
Will he not turn round and look at them? For 
not to smite, but to bless, are the hands up- 
lifted behind him. Had the powers that pur- 
sue us not been goodness and mercy, they 
i97 



19 8 Ube Divine pursuit 

would have slain us long ago, as cumberers of 
the ground. 

Every morning we open our eyes upon a 
world flooded with God's light and laden with 
His bounty. He pursues us through the 
troublous cares of the day into the quiet slum- 
berland, where care is forgotten; pursues us 
week by week through the harsh claims of a 
noisy world till, on His own day, he sets our 
feet within the courts of His house among the 
great congregation; pursues us over lonely 
ways marked by the graves of those we love, 
and up steep hills of sorrow, to the heights 
where only His pure breezes blow, and whence 
we can see — not very far away — the radiant 
city that abideth and our lost alive for ever- 
more. He has tracked us across the desert of 
the dying year, and His gracious hand is now 
upon us in the glad Christmas time. We are 
where we are to-day because of the babe who 
was wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in 
a manger. 

Dear and fair had God's mercy been to the 
men of the early times ; still more dear and 



XTbe SHvtne pursuit 199 

still more fair did He make it in the urgency 
of His pursuit of men. He so loved the world 
that He sent goodness and mercy incarnate 
in His Son, who dwelt among lis, and won the 
worship of all earnest hearts, and with gentle 
power is drawing lis to Himself to-day, as we 
think of Bethlehem. He for whom there was 
no room in the inn brought us into a wide place : 
into a wider faith in the goodness and mercy 
which pursue us, into a life more abundant and 
a fuller joy. The sight of Him, the words of 
Him, lift us up into quietness and confidence in 
face of doubt and fear and death, and fill the 
unknown world beyond with glory. In Him 
we have all things, peace, strength, heaven, 
fellowship with the saints on earth, and in 
glory everlasting ; in Him we see how earnest 
is God's pursuit of us. But His quest of us 
must be answered by our quest of Him. "Let 
us follow on," says the prophet of God's love, 
"to know the Lord" ; let us pursue — for that is 
the word here too. Would we be truly God- 
like we must pursue as He pursues, following 
in the footsteps of Christ, till at the last He 



200 ube Divine pursuit 

sets us at God's right hand. He in quest 
of us and we of Him, shall surely find each 
other. 



"Usaac went out to meottate in tbe 
fielo at tbe turning of tbe evening." 



THE TURNING OF THE EVENING 

Long centuries ago a man " went out to medi- 
tate in the field at the turning of the evening. ' ' 
His heart was full of thoughts both sweet and 
sad. His mother was dead, and his bride was 
coming; she was nearer than he knew. He 
looked down the long vista of an untried ex- 
perience, and before stepping into it he went 
out to meditate. 

Upon us has come another evening, the even- 
ing of the year's long day. We stand within 
its swiftly-deepening shadows, and thoughts 
enough should possess our hearts, ere we trust 
ourselves to look upon the dawn of a new day. 
It becomes us, too, to go out; out of the glare 
and babble within the walls, out to the silence 
and to God, there and before Him to meditate. 
The most fatally reckless thing that any man 
can do is not to meditate at the turning of 

such an evening. For surely, and it may be 
203 



2o 4 Ube 2)ivine pursuit 

swiftly, will descend upon us all another and a 
darker night, and then it will be too late. 

How strange and lonely to watch the long 
day dying, and to look out from the creeping 
shadows across the way that it has come ! Go 
out by yourself. It is so still that you can 
hear the echo of the faintest footfall, and the 
sound of voices that you thought were dead. 
Listen! and across the quiet air will float 
words that will startle you, your own angry 
words hurled in haste, and fraught with sor- 
row for the hearts on which they fell. And 
other voices there are, vows that you made in 
the joy of your heart, born in enthusiasm, only 
to vanish when the love grew cold. How sad 
and mocking are their echoes now ! Yet other 
voices break the stillness — strong, helpful 
words of heaven-sent friends, and of Holy 
Scripture, and gracious words of Jesus and 
His earthly ministers, spoken from week to 
week in love, that might have blessed and 
lifted up your life. They too are forgotten, 
and the dim, confused echo comes back to 
upbraid you. O Lord ! as we listen, our hearts 



Zbc UntniriQ of tbe Evening 205 

accuse lis. For the hasty word and the broken 
vow, and the neglected message, forgive when 
Thou hearest us, O Lord! 

The night is growing darker, and we are 
alone. Yet we feel that there are presences 
about us, some beautiful as the dawn, some 
foul as hell. Look ! There, in all their loveli- 
ness, stands many a forgotten blessing. Long 
ago they visited us like angels. We prayed for 
them: and when they came, we thought we 
must constrain them to abide with us forever 
— so dear were they. But day by day their 
faces grew familiar, and our eyes were holden 
that we saw no angel there. But now these 
angel faces shine through the night upon us ; 
and we ask ourselves in sad wonderment how 
we could have forgotten a vision so fair. 

But let me look again! Beside the disap- 
pointed angels stands a dark and awful figure, 
and looks in upon me with its mocking eyes. 
Surely I have met that face before, not many 
months, nay, not many days ago. Ah me! 
It is myself. Oh, the light of red passion that 
leaps from those eyes, and the cross purposes 



206 ftbe Divine pursuit 

that I know to have darkened that heart! Oh, 
the cruel, relentlessness with which I — for that 
is I — quenched the pleadings of the Spirit, and 
the hypocrisy of that smile, which the world 
mistook for kindness. And now dost thou 
come in the dark to torment me? Oh, save 
me from myself, good Lord ! if that be verily 
myself. Save me, for Jesus' sake. 

For there, beside that guilty thing from 
which I shrink in terror, stands Jesus as He 
has often stood before. Yes, often He came in 
the bright hours of the day. But I was strong 
and careless ; and the sun was shining. Pride 
ruled my will, and I did not know how poor I 
was without Him. He came, too, in my sor- 
row and in His blessed sacrament; but, when 
sorrow and sacrament were over, I left Him. 
And, now that I am all alone, He is come back 
with those soft, kind eyes of His. 

With Him all night I mean to stay, 
And wrestle till the break of day. 

My meditation is more sad than sweet as 
there pass in solemn procession before me the 
wrongs that I have done, the blessings that I 



Ube Uurning of tbe Evenino 207 

have rejected or forgotten. And I leave my 
place in the darkness with a deeper sense of 
my need of the everlasting God and of the 
Good Shepherd of the silly sheep. I pray that 
He may purify me by this vision of the night, 
and make me more worthy of the virgin year 
with which He seems in His grace to be about 
to bless me. And when for me the last night 
falls, may I wake with Him on the break of the 
everlasting day ! 



Himiabts an& most merciful ffatber, 

WHO HAST GUIDED OUR STEPS ACROSS ANOTHER 
YEAR, WE BOW BEFORE THEE IN SOLEMN GRATI- 
TUDE, AS WE CALL TO MIND THY MANIFOLD 
MERCIES, OF WHICH WE HAVE BEEN SO UN- 
WORTHY. With full heart we bless Thee 
for all the varied discipline by which thou 
hast with patient love been preparing us 
day by day for thine everlasting kingdom: 
for any joy that renewed our hope and 
strength, and for any grief that helped 
us to feel that here we are but pilgrims 
and strangers. thy gracious hand has 
been upon all our life. surely thou hast 
crowned our year with thy goodness, and 
our praise shall be of thee. 

With Sorrow and penitence would we 
confess that our sin has been ever before 
us. Our feet have not been swift to run 

IN THE WAY THAT LEADETH UNTO LIFE: OUR 

HANDS HAVE NOT BEEN WILLING TO DO THE WORK 
208 



BlmfQbts jfatber 209 

which Thou hast given them to do: nor 
have our hearts been cleansed of their 
evil and selfish purposes. have pity upon 
us, whom the years carry away as with 
a flood. Have pity upon us, O Father, 
Thou whose years know no end, and let 
not Thy kindness depart from us; for 
in humility and hope we wait for thy 
Salvation. 

Open our eyes to see Thy most blessed 
will, and may we find therein our peace, 
as the shadows of the departing year 
gather round us, we would feel the com- 
forting and reassuring touch of jesus' 
hand. Through all our life may He Lead 

US STEP BY STEP, TILL He BRING US AT THE 

last into that world which is all light 
and in which is no darkness at all. for 
His own name's sake. Amen. 



Sept 28 190& 



SEP 9 1901 



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